It’s a busy week, but I wanted to share a few key takeaways from the competition conference I attended in Warsaw. Huge thanks to organisers Ioannis Lianos, Maciej Bernatt, Centre for Antitrust and Regulatory Studies UCL Faculty of Laws, @Inclusive Competition Forum, ASCOLA Central Europe Chapter —in partnership with Office for Competition and Consumer Protection and University of Warsaw for bringing together so many CEE voices in one room. It was great to meet some old and new colleagues in beautiful Warsaw.
💡CEE national competition authorities have done remarkable work over the past 20 years since #EU enlargement — shaping markets, integrating competition into the national economies, and advancing liberalisation in so many sectors. These achievements deserve #recognition, especially if you tend to evaluate their enforcement work only through the lens of the value of the fines, which can be indeed misleading.
💎Enforcement maturity varies across the region, but some NCAs—like the Consiliul Concurenţei —have shown #strongperformance. This includes a higher number of bid-rigging cases, a proactive approach to #carteldetection, and improved coordination of investigative efforts. The panel featuring Cosmin Belacurencu, Andrej Matvoz Kamil Nejezchleb offered #valuableinsights while Jasminka Pecotic Kaufman presented her excellent research.
🔦CEE NCAs need to pay closer attention to #competition issues signals coming from diverse actors in their national markets.
🧮The NCAs are facing various but quite similar challenges particularly in staff recruitment. Congratulations to Consiliul Concurenţei who has made significant progress in competition advocacy, despite the huge increase of their responsibilities – not only #competition and #stateaid areas are in their hands but they now have regulatory work for 9 laws, #investmentscreening #FDI is one of the areas where they recently became very busy.
🍏The panel on the food value chain revealed similarities and differences across the authorities. #UTP cases are clearly here to stay. NCAs face a tough balancing act between ensuring affordable prices for consumers and protecting vulnerable stakeholders (eg small farmers).
👌European Commission praised the NCAs in this region and shared with us their success stories, highlighting the existing strong cooperation within the #ECN. CEE NCAs have handled a solid number of #traditionalcases (e.g., in #energy and #telecom – sectors with rich enforcement history in Western Europe), but also there’s exciting momentum around their novel cases (e.g., no-poach agreements, digital platforms). Over the past 20 years, CEE NCAs opened around 700 investigations and finalised approximately 350 cases involving both #national and #EUcompetitionlaw, evidence to their growing #capabilities.
Building Competition Institutions for Sustainable Growth
