A milestone 10th Conference “Antitrust Policy: Science, Practice, Education,” was held at HSE University. The event was organized by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, the Higher School of Economics, and the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre. One of the key themes was the role of new technologies in regulation — in particular, how AI tools can be used to combat cartels.
On the first day of the conference, the International Cartel Forum 2025 took place. The event brought together heads and representatives of BRICS and Eurasian Economic Union competition authorities, officials from Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, members of the judiciary, and leading scholars and practitioners in antitrust regulation.
The second day featured a meeting of the BRICS Working Group on Cartels and discussions on the so-called “sixth antitrust package,” which focuses on the intersection of intellectual property rights and competition policy.
Opening the conference, Maxim Shaskolsky, Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, emphasized that combating cartels and other anti-competitive agreements remains one of the top priorities for regulators worldwide. In this context, he noted, international cooperation among competition authorities — particularly within the newly expanded BRICS framework — has become increasingly important.
In photo: Nikita Anisimov © HSE University
Given the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the growing complexity of digital markets, particular attention is being paid to applying rigorous scientific methods to their analysis. Nikita Anisimov, Rector of the of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University), noted that the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) consistently relies on evidence-based, research-driven approaches in its work — an effort strongly supported by the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre at HSE.
Two foundational BRICS Centre reports on combating cross-border cartels formed the basis for the activities of UNCTAD’s Working Group on Cross-Border Cartels. Earlier this May, the Centre’s researchers published a paper in Nature Complexity proposing a new framework for regulating digital platforms and ecosystems.
Overall, digital platforms in Russia are governed under the country’s fifth antitrust package, which was developed with input from HSE scholars and was first introduced at the university.
Alexey Ivanov, Director of the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, spoke at the session “Artificial Intelligence Against Cartels,” moderated by Grigory Radionov, Deputy Head of Russia’s FAS.Ivanov noted that in the digital sphere, cartelization is taking on new forms: an undefined number of participants, subtle and hard-to-detect methods of coordination. Around the world, courts have already begun developing case law on algorithmic cartelization. In particular, he referenced a decision by the UK competition authority that recognized the use of pricing algorithms as an illegal form of coordination (price-setting coordination).
In photo, from left to right: Oleg Dubkov, Alexey Ivanov, Fu Hongyu, Gegham Gevorgyan, Sergey Kuznetsov © HSE University
A different type of algorithmic cartelization can be seen in the case of online marketplaces. U.S. regulators, for example, have accused Amazon of using software designed to detect whether a seller was offering lower prices on competing platforms.
“Russian marketplaces, including Wildberries, also use automated mechanisms for monitoring pricing and discounting, which the FAS has assessed as anti-competitive,”
Ivanov noted.
Despite the advantages of digital platforms, their downsides can’t be ignored. At the same time, Ivanov argued, cartels today should not be viewed as an absolute evil, but rather as an inevitable element of the modern digital economy.
Concluding his remarks, he stressed that digital cartels must no longer remain black boxes for regulators:
“We need to compel them to disclose information about themselves — to understand how their algorithms actually work.”
Sergey Kuznetsov, Head of the School of Data Analysis and Artificial Intelligence, HSE University, outlined the main objectives of using AI in anti-cartel enforcement: detecting anomalous participant behavior, identifying suspicious tenders, conducting online collusion-risk assessments, and uncovering cases of simulated competition.
“It should be noted that using artificial intelligence to counter cartel-related harms requires us to work with multimodal data — econometric indicators, price anomalies, time series, networks, network-based data such as social media and its analysis, where both individuals and corporations act as nodes, and, of course, textual information,”
he said.
In photo, from left to right: Sergey Puzyrevsky, Alexey Ivanov, Alexey Koshel, Gadis Gadzhiev © HSE University
Alexey Koshel, Vice Rector of the HSE University, professor of the Faculty of Law, HSE University, took part in a discussion on the proposal to abolish antitrust immunities in the field of intellectual property — a Federal Antimonopoly Service bill known as the sixth antitrust package. He noted that the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation enshrines freedom of enterprise, a free market, and the prohibition of monopolization and unfair competition as constitutionally significant values. These principles underscore the priority of market relations and remain essential for shaping the country’s economic and scientific environment.
“Since 1993, market relations have undergone major changes driven by external factors and technological transformation. In this context, it is particularly important to focus on the interface between intellectual property and competition law, especially given the challenges arising from the growth of artificial intelligence technologies and big-data analytics,” he argued. “We must determine how to protect intellectual property when creating new products based on publicly available or partially available resources — and do so in a way that does not hinder scientific and technological progress.”
Gadis Gadzhiev, Ph.D. of Juridical Sciences, Professor, Academic Supervisor, HSE University in St. Petersburg, Retired Judge of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, emphasized that the issue of antitrust immunities concerns the “expression of constitutional meaning” — the “spirit and voice” of the Constitution. Accordingly, he argued, the Federal Antimonopoly Service has every justification to seek a revision of the current antitrust immunity provisions, which, in their present form, are effectively based on a “everything for us, nothing for others” principle and therefore need to be abolished.
Source: HSE
