Cross-border cartels have long been a pressing issue for competition authorities and,  arguably, constitute the most challenging type of anti-competitive behaviour due to complexity inherent in investigating and suppressing them. While more developed and mature competition authorities have experienced success in fighting such cartels, more recently formed and less well-resourced competition law enforcement authorities could face problems in combatting these cartels due to legislative restrictions, lack of knowledge and expertise and other factors.

The BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre supports the need for both inclusive discussion with regard to the challenges competition authorities face in the course of investigating cross-border cartels and for in-depth analysis of diverse perspectives and ways by which to overcome such challenges.

The purpose of the research is to analyse the ‘state of play’ and experiences of competition authorities from both developed and developing countries with regard to combatting cross-border cartels, identify the key challenges they face and examine the views of various competition agencies across the globe as to how to deal with those challenges.