The 12th BRICS leaders summit was held on November 17 via
videoconference chaired by the Russian President Vladimir Putin. The
main topics included the mutual partnership in favor of global
stability, common security and innovation growth. The parties summed up
the results of Russia’s BRICS Chairmanship in 2020, discussed the
prospects of cooperation within BRICS, and exchanged views on relevant
current issues on the international and regional agenda. The leaders of
Brazil, Russian, India, China and South Africa approved the updated
strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2020-2025: the document
determined the priorities of BRICS cooperation in trade, investments,
finance, digital economy, innovations and sustainable development.
The
cooperation between BRICS countries have always been targeted on the
achievement of higher standards and improvement of the quality of
people’s life. Due to the impact of pandemic, the countries had to
jointly find the solutions to recover from its effects and to establish
new cooperation formats, such as via video communication tools. Since
January 1, when the Russian Chairmanship started, 130 various meetings
were successfully held within BRICS: the parties managed to enhance and
strengthen their understanding in the key areas of cooperation.
On the press conference before the Summit, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia and the Russian BRICS Sherpa Sergey Ryabkov introduced the achievements of five countries in regard of competition policy: the year of 2019 was marked by the extension for an open-end period of the Memorandum of Understanding between BRICS Competition Authorities on Cooperation in the field of Competition Law and Policy, signed in 2016 in Saint Petersburg, as well as by the establishment of BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre. The Centre’s mission is to provide expert academic support to the competition cooperation of BRICS countries and to develop the most effective practices to fight monopolistic activities.
The key results of the Summit were summarized in the Moscow Declaration, signed by the respective state leaders in the end of the meeting. The Declaration noted the progress in cooperation among the BRICS countries’ competition authorities, which was aimed at ensuring conditions for fair competition in priority markets and those critical for socio-economic development, improving competition policy and enforcement, and acknowledged the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre activities.
The BRICS Summit once again confirmed the significance of the Centre being a BRICS cooperation platform in the context of rapid development of digital economy. The Centre sees its goal in bringing the academic resources of BRICS countries together in order to develop new approaches to the global competition and to create fair competition order both at domestic and global levels. On September 24 the Government of the Russian Federation officially ensured the activities of the BRICS Competition Centre as an independent subdivision of the Higher School of Economics, and the heads of BRICS competition authorities expressed their support for the Centre’s future development during the online meeting of BRICS Coordination Committee on Antimonopoly Policy on November 12.
