Dear ICN community,
Today is the ICN’s 11th anniversary. I thought I would celebrate the occasion by providing a brief update on current ICN initiatives.
This fall we are also celebrating the 10th anniversary of the ICN’s first recommended practices. We should be proud of ICN’s accomplishments in developing and adopting these international norms. A recent speech I gave in recognition of this 10th anniversary, “ICN’s Role in Creating and Diffusing Norms”, is available here.
Working Groups
ICN Vice Chair Andreas Mundt is working with the Working Group chairs to evaluate and improve the focus, quality, and inclusiveness of ICN work product. Brief updates for working group projects are below, with more detailed updates available here.
Advocacy
The Benefits Project is developing messages for regulators and legislators on the benefits of competition as part of a good practice manual for competition agencies. This project will build on the experience and know-how that was collected during the stocktaking exercise carried out in 2011-2012. The Competition Culture Project is preparing a report on institutions constituting competition culture for this year’s annual conference. The report will define competition culture and share experience on how members interact with the constituent parts of a competition culture. This week, the Advocacy Working Group is holding its first ever workshop in Paris. Similarly, the ICNblog had a series of postings on ICN advocacy initiatives and member specific initiatives.
Agency Effectiveness
Work on the new ICN project on investigative process is well underway, with a survey on enforcement tools and agency transparency practices. The knowledge management and human resources chapters of the Agency Practice Manual are also underway, with completed chapters planned for the Warsaw conference. For the curriculum project, the group is preparing modules on developing countries, investigative skills, and advocacy.
Cartels
In addition to work on a chapter on international cooperation and information sharing for the Anti-Cartel Enforcement Manual, the Cartel Working Group is hosting a series of discussion calls on leniency. Upcoming calls include one on November 13 on leniency considerations in multijurisdictional investigations, and another on December 12 on the interaction between leniency programs and private enforcement. In September, the Cartel Working Group held their annual workshop in Panama City, Panama.
Mergers
The Working Group’s headline project, a revised chapter on economic analysis in merger review for the Investigative Techniques Handbook, is on track for the annual conference. A workshop on the same topic will be held in Bogota, Colombia on November 8-9. Members and NGAs are welcome to learn more or participate here. In other projects, the Working Group is developing the contact list of liaison officers for the ICN Framework for Merger Review Cooperation, as well as a self-assessment tool for the recommended practices on merger analysis.
Unilateral Conduct
Exclusive dealing is the main topic the unilateral conduct group is addressing this year. The group held a teleseminar on the topic in July, followed by a regional workshop in Singapore on July 24-25. The group is now focused on drafting a chapter on exclusive dealing for the unilateral conduct workbook, and will hold a teleseminar on enforcement cooperation next month.
Steering Group initiative
Survey results from the ICN-OECD joint project on international enforcement cooperation are in, and the project team is considering various types of prescriptive work product that might result from the survey analysis.
As a reminder, the Chair’s note and minutes for each Steering Group meeting are available here.
Chair’s Initiatives
In the Vision Statement prepared for the last annual conference I outlined three goals: 1. Member engagement; 2. Support for member reforms; and 3. Increasing the visibility of competition policy.
Vice Chair Bruno Lasserre is working on member engagement, preparing a new member “track” as well as the framework for an academic hubs project.
Recognizing the importance of external support for domestic reforms, the ICN Steering Group agreed on a process for ICN support for member reforms. If you are considering reforms to your competition law and are interested in support, please contact here.
The visibility initiative will move forward with the Advocacy Working Group. In addition to developing messages on the benefits of competition, we are also hoping to prepare guidance for regulators on general principles for competition-friendly policy formulation. A recent speech I gave on these initiatives and the importance of competition policy more generally is available here.
Annual Conference
We are halfway through our ICN year, with six months to go until our next annual conference, which will be held in Warsaw, Poland on April 23-26, 2013. The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) is actively preparing for this year’s conference, including work on the host’s “special project”, the UOKiK is surveying all ICN members on their experience working with courts and judges.
The 2014 annual conference will be held April 22-24 in Marrakech, Morocco.
For more ICN news, including tips on what to watch for, see the ICNblog and Competition Policy International’s ICN column.
I am most grateful to all of you working on these projects, and encourage those of you who are not closely involved in the work to consider participating more actively in the lead up to the 2013 annual conference. For more information about how to get involved, please email here.
With best regards,
Eduardo Pérez Motta
Chair, ICN Steering Group