The heads of the BRICS countries' competition authorities met in a new online format. Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, made a presentation on the work of the Centre.
Among
other things, participants have discussed the extension of the
Memorandum of Cooperation between the BRICS countries' competition
authorities and closer cooperation in considering global deals of
economic concentration. In October 2020, at the UNCTAD platform, it is
planned to discuss the FAS Russia initiative to fight cartels at the
international level, in the implementation of which the BRICS
Competition Law and Policy Center is actively involved. The competition
authorities of the BRICS countries have approved the corresponding
initiatives of the Russian side.
The heads of the competition
authorities of Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa also heard a
report from Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Law and
Policy Center and the Institute for Law and Development of the
HSE-Skolkovo.
At the end of the meeting, Ms Gan Lin, Vice
Minister of the State Administration for Regulation of Markets of the
PRC, informed the participants of the meeting about the preparations for
the 7th BRICS International Conference on Antitrust Law, which is held
every two years in different countries of the Association. The Seventh
BRICS Antimonopoly Conference will be held in China in Sichuan province
in September 2021. The Chinese colleagues invited all participants of
the meeting to actively engage in working on the topics and materials of
the upcoming conference.
In his report, Alexey Ivanov spoke about
the work of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre over the past
five years and about its plans until the end of 2022.
According
to Alexey, the main task of the BRICS Center is to provide academic
support for cooperation between the antimonopoly authorities of the
BRICS countries and unite the scientific communities of our countries.
The
key challenge facing antitrust agencies around the world today is the
growing concentration of capital and other resources, including data and
technology, in the hands of an ever-decreasing number of players. For
the BRICS countries, the problems of rising inequality and stagnation in
economic development are more acute than for developed economies. In
this context, the critical mission of the BRICS Competition Law and
Policy Centre should be to advance the development agenda and strengthen
the role of antitrust regulation in overcoming imbalances in the world
economy.
The Centre's team sees its role not only in providing
scientific support to the competition authorities of the BRICS
countries in developing new approaches to antitrust regulation but also
in shaping a new global agenda that will help smooth out inequality and
remove development imbalances in the world - "In the research projects
already implemented by the BRICS Antimonopoly Centre, in close
cooperation with our partners from leading universities in China, India,
Brazil and South Africa, the problems of promoting development and
overcoming inequality in the world economy by means of competition law
and policy run like a red thread," said Alexey Ivanov.
The
work of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centtr on the basis of the
HSE is a sign of recognition from both the Russian Government and our
BRICS partners for the deep expertise formed at the HSE on antitrust law
and merit in promoting the development theme at the international
level.
The Higher School of Economics has already become a centre of
attraction for leading universities from the BRICS countries, which have
become partners of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre. Over
the past five years, these universities have actively participated in
the Center's key research projects - on global food chains and new
approaches to antitrust regulation of the digital economy. The work of
the Centre has once again confirmed that on the international agenda,
Russian research groups could become drivers of scientific cooperation.
Moreover, this cooperation can also turn theory into practice. The
outcome of the food project was, in particular, a change in approaches
to the coordination of transactions of economic concentration on a
global scale in emerging markets. In the discussion on the digital
economy, the Centtr pushed the BRICS antimonopoly agencies to take
practical steps to transform regulation, which in Russia was expressed,
in particular, in the development of the Fifth Antimonopoly Package and a
change in several approaches in law enforcement practice. Similar
legislative initiatives at the suggestion of our partners in these
countries are already being considered in India and China.
Among the promising areas of work of the BRICS Antimonopoly Centre for the next three years, Alexey Ivanov noted the following:
- the second phase of the study on global food chains with a focus on the oligopoly of global grain traders;
- deepening the digital project in the light of the new realities that the pandemic has brought;
-
an empirical study on the joint fight of antitrust authorities against
cross-border cartels (the presentation of the preliminary results of the
study will take place at the UNCTAD international conference in Geneva
in October this year);
- a new large-scale research project on competition in pharmaceutical markets.
The
pharmaceutical markets project will become a natural continuation of
the research work of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, based
on the established format of cooperation with the antimonopoly
authorities of our countries. Thus, for each of the research topics of
the Center, working groups were created from representatives of the
antitrust authorities of the BRICS countries. The Working Groups on Food
Markets and the Digital Economy have set priorities and ensured a
strong link between the BRICS competition authorities and the research
team of the Center conducting relevant research. The pharmaceutical
project, which is being implemented in close cooperation with the
working group on pharmaceutical markets, already formed by the BRICS
competition agencies, will not be an exception.
The project on
competition in pharmaceutical markets includes three key areas:
analysis of structural problems of the global pharmaceutical market
(which have become especially noticeable in the context of a pandemic);
anti-competitive practices of buying up the achievements of competitors,
the so-called 'Killer acquisitions', i.e. mergers and acquisitions
aimed at eliminating potential competition by buying up competitive
projects at an early stage, which significantly hinders the development
of innovation and dissemination of knowledge; the problems of reducing
barriers to entry to the market for generic drugs and, in general, the
problems of increasing the availability of medicines through antitrust
regulation.
"There is a clear demand for justice in the world
today, for changing the architecture of the world economy, and this
demand cannot be ignored. Antitrust law can become one of the effective
tools to satisfy this demand if it is actively and coordinatedly applied
by our countries, which represent almost half of the world population
and economic power ", - said Alexey Ivanov.