Dear ICN community,
Welcome to the ICN’s quarterly update. In this message I am pleased to provide brief updates of the ICN activity for the last three months.
Annual Conference
The Turkish competition authority (TCA) has graciously offered to host the annual conference which will take place in Istanbul on April 27-29, 2010, click here. Registration closes April 2, 2010. I look forward to meeting you there in order to share together many competition issues of common interest.
The TCA has also prepared a questionnaire of the Special Project 2010 on the “Interface between Competition Policy and other Public Policies” whose key findings to the survey will be discussed in a showcase session in Istanbul.
Working Group Activity
One month ahead of the 2010 annual conference, the five substantive working groups are finalizing their projects and already discussing their respective work plans for 2010-2011.
In the Advocacy Working Group, the Experience Sharing subgroup has conducted its last three teleseminars for this ICN year. The most recent topics covered include: the role of international organizations in advocacy; competition in the financial markets; and evaluation of certain agencies’ competition advocacy programmes. The Market Studies subgroup has prepared a draft Market Studies Good Practice Handbook, outlining good practice for the process of conducting market studies, building on accumulated experience and learning of member agencies. The project group also prepared a Market Studies Information Store, an online information store of market studies conducted by ICN member agencies within the last five years. The store soon will be available on the ICN’s website.
The Agency Effectiveness Working Group is drafting two chapters of an operational handbook, covering strategy planning and prioritisation and effective project delivery. Also, John Fingleton, Chair of the ICN Steering Group, has announced that the UK OFT will host a workshop for heads of agencies in London on 12-13 July 2010. This workshop is intended to follow on the highly successful workshop hosted by the European Commission in January 2009, exploring in more depth the issues of culture, people and knowledge management, and leadership and succession.
On the legal framework side, the Cartel Working Group has organised two teleseminars on criminalisation for hard-core cartels conduct. Also, the subgroup on enforcement techniques has revised its chapters on digital evidence gathering and case initiation of the Anti-cartel Enforcement Manual. Japan has been elected to host the 2010 Cartel workshop which will take place from 5-7 October 2010 in Yokohama.
The Merger Working Group has drafted two Recommended Practices on “failing firm defence” and “market definition”. These practices will be submitted to the ICN membership for adoption at the annual conference next month. The Working Group also conducted its first teleseminar on remedies in merger cases. Italy will host a merger workshop in November 2010.
After having finalized its report on refusal to deal which will be submitted to the upcoming annual conference, the Unilateral Conduct Working Group has also addressed the issue of remedies in unilateral conduct cases in a recent webinar. The European Commission will host a unilateral conduct workshop in Brussels from 2-3 December 2010.
Vice Chair Activity
The three vice chairs are still dedicating a great amount of time to promote the ICN work product in various ways.
Vice Chair for Advocacy and Implementation, JFTC’s Kazuhiko Takeshima, has held an Advocacy and Implementation Network (AIN) conference call where together with other ICN members; the JFTC explained the current status of this assistance program for young ICN agency members.
With the Vice Chair for International Coordination, Mexico’s Eduardo Perez Motta, the joint projects between the ICN and UNCTAD (in the course of the 6th Review Conference) and the World Bank (in the transport sector) have been launched and other projects with APEC and OECD are currently being explored.
The US FTC’s Bill Kovacic, Vice Chair for Outreach, continues with the ICN blog, with posting on topics as varied as the Olympics, video awards, NGA outreach, member activity, and upcoming teleseminars. Kovacic also has prepared an introduction to ICN toolkit for new members or new participants to the ICN, and continues work on an evaluation of the ICN.
NGA Liaison
As the ICN’s first NGA Liaison, my priority was to identify where we were standing in order to consider where to go. Based on information submitted by the working groups, I reported to the SG members that (1) some three quarters of NGAs are located in North America and Europe and that (2) the vast majority of NGAS are from law firms and relatively few are from academic or consumer organisations. Then, there was a clear consensus from SG members that we needed to broaden NGAs profile as well as to develop their geographic spread.
In addition, the SG members agreed that current procedures for selection and participation were unclear therefore we prepared, with the help of the working group chairs, an internal written document that sets out procedures for NGA participation in the activities of the ICN.
In the meantime, SG members and WG chairs were encouraged to engage more actively in outreach efforts in their jurisdictions in line with the current procedures. Others such as Vice Chair for Outreach Bill Kovacic and former ICN Chair David Lewis have been actively seeking additional participation from academics.
Recently, thanks to the contribution of the Vice Chair for Outreach which conducted an extensive research on non-governmental actors’ involvement in other international governmental networks, we issued a study identifying areas of best practices that could be adopted by the ICN for the NGA representation. We are considering soliciting views (through short questionnaires) of attendees to the Istanbul annual conference on the need for changes to NGA policy.
In the future, if you prefer not to receive these updates, please send an email to stephanie.yon@autoritedelaconcurrence.fr with the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
Best regards,
Bruno Lasserre
President of the Autorité de la concurrence
NGA Liaison