FAS RUSSIA AND RCCA DISCUSSED MAIN DIRECTIONS OF STATE ANTIMONOPOLY POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Discussion was held within the framework of the Antimonopoly Forum organized by the Russian Corporate Counsel Association (RCCA) with the support of the FAS Russia and the EEC. The FAS Russia was represented by the Deputy Heads Sergey Puzyrevskiy, Timofey Nizhegorodtsev and Andrey Kashevarov.

Sergey Puzyrevskiy spoke during the first session, which was devoted to the issues of active state policy aimed at competition development. In his report, he focused on the trends that clearly show the directions of the state antimonopoly policy.

In 2015-2020, the "punitive aspect" in the activities of the antimonopoly authority significantly decreased, and the number of antimonopoly cases themselves decreased by three times. The FAS Russia was able to develop a policy of "soft" antimonopoly regulation. The authority managed to ensure the presence of at least three economic entities in all sectors of the economy, with the exception of markets that are in a state of natural monopoly. Compared to 2017, the number of violations by state authorities was reduced by half. According to Sergey Puzyrevskiy, it was possible to solve this problem by introducing antimonopoly compliance, not only in federal executive bodies, but also in regional and municipal ones, which account for most of the violations.

The participants of the second session discussed interests of business, on the one hand, and the requirements of the antimonopoly legislation, on the other, in case of shock changes in the market. The session was attended by the Deputy Head of the FAS Russia Timofey Nizhegorodtsev.

"In most developed countries, the state has mechanisms to influence prices in addition to the work of the market. This is a variety of tariff regulation, the establishment of reference (limit) prices for socially important goods, such as medicines. Besides, there are mechanisms of urgent impact on prices in the case of a sharp increase in prices (price shocks) for some reason," said Timofey Nizhegorodtsev.

One of the liveliest discussions took place at the third session "Actual problems of cross-border trade". Andrey Kashevarov made a report on "Issues of parallel imports: where is the line between the objective interest of producers and the restriction of competition?".

The Deputy Head of the FAS Russia noted that the authority is open to dialogue with companies and continues to support the need to amend the legislation regarding parallel imports. At the same time, the FAS Russia is ready to consider the appeals of independent importers with complaints about the unjustified refusal of rights holders when importing goods to the territory of the Russian Federation. Judicial practice in this category of cases will show what will be the next steps of the FAS in the field of regulating parallel imports.

"An important result of the joint work of FAS Russia and RCCA is the draft clarifications on antimonopoly compliance. The document turned out to be as flexible as possible, economic entities will be able to solve many issues at their own discretion. The issue of mitigating liability when it comes to effective, rather than "paper" compliance was also discussed. RCCA hopes that the recognition of antimonopoly compliance as a mitigating circumstance will be fixed in the new version of the Code of Administrative Offences and is ready to take an active part in the discussion of the amendments," summed up Alexandra Nesterenko, President of the RCCA.