The Commission for the Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia signed a Memorandum of Cooperation in the field of application of competition law with the Georgian National Competition Agency during the II International Conference on Competition and Consumer Protection held in Tbilisi.

This Memorandum, signed by Commission Council member Čedomir Radojčić and President of the National Competition Agency of Georgia Irakli Lekvinadze, is aimed at improving the cooperation in the field of competition protection as well as further development of bilateral relations.

Also within the panel “Restrictive agreements, effective mechanisms for detection and prevention”, member of the Council of the Commission Čedomir Radojčić held a presentation of the Business Compliance Program Model with regulations on competition protection with Guidelines and lists for compliance control and risk identification which was developed by the Commission.
The heads of state authorities of Georgia, representatives of regulatory bodies, experts from relevant fields and agencies of other countries, representatives of international organizations (UNCTAD, OECD, etc.), media and others participated in the conference as well.

The objective of this meeting, organized by the Georgian National Competition Agency, the National Bank of Georgia, the Georgian National Regulatory Commission for Energy and Water Supply, the National Communications Commission and the State Oversight Service of Georgia, was to exchange experiences and best international practices, improve joint action and establish cooperation between participants.

Representatives of the Commission for the Protection of Competition met with the representatives of the OECD from the OECD Department for Southeast Europe and the OECD Department for Competition, as well as with a representative of the Republic Secretariat for Public Policies.

The meeting was held as part of the continuation of activities on the project “Fair Market Conditions for Competitiveness”, which the OECD has been implementing since 2019.

The objective of the meeting was to organize a joint workshop on the topic of assessing the impact of regulations on competition in the market, intended primarily for civil servants who work on the drafting of regulations at ministries and other organizations that exercise public authority.

The Commission for the Protection of Competition took part in the second annual conference of the Corporate Compliance Association on the topic of “Changing Perspectives” which was held in Belgrade. More than 180 participants took part in the conference, including lecturers and panelists from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia, who contributed to the promotion of corporate compliance.

The work of the Commission in the field of corporate compliance was presented within the panel on the topic of the future of the Compliance function. An overview of the Commission’s activities in the past two years was presented, which were undertaken in order to raise the level of awareness of corporate needs in accordance with regulations on competition protection, whereas the need for further education in this area was also highlighted.

In order to help undertakings in the process of adopting competition compliance programs, the Commission for Protection of Competition has prepared in hardcopy in English, the Guidelines for Drafting Competition Compliance Programs, a Template Competition Compliance Program accompanying the Guidelines and two Competition Checklists for assessing exposure of undertakings to risks of competition infringements.

The aim of these materials is to guide undertakings, both large and SMEs (small and medium-sized companies), when drafting internal acts and regulations to ensure that their business operations are in line with competition rules and to raise awareness among a wider circle of undertakings of the need for competition compliance.

The Guidelines with the accompanying documents are available on the Commission’s website and can be taken in hardcopy, both in Serbian and English, every business day at the Commission for the Protection of Competition, 25 Savska Street, Belgrade.

Representatives of the Commission for the Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia – Čedomir Radojčić, member of the Council and senior advisors Nina Vasić and Maja Dobrić, took part in the 22nd ICN annual conference that took place in Barcelona from October 18 to 20, hosted by the Spanish competition authority, the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC).

The conference was attended by hundreds of participants from around 100 countries, namely the highest representatives of competition authorities, judges, university professors, lawyers, economists and consultants from the field of competition protection, etc.
The topics of this year’s conference reflected the activities of working groups within the International Competition Network (ICN) and related to the role of courts, digital concentrations, lawyers, challenges in cases of abuse of a dominant position, the relationship between privacy protection and competition protection, selection of priorities, further steps in cartel detection and other topics as well.

During the conference, representatives of the Commission had a notable participation, Nina Vasić was the moderator of the panel within the International Competition Network for the Effectiveness of Competition Authorities (ICN AEWG) on the topic of Measuring effectiveness: ex-post and ex-ante impact assessment of competition authorities’ activities and Maja Dobrić, within the same working group, presented the Commission’s experiences in an agency-only session on the topic of Innovative detection tools and their effective usage.

At the conference, experience was exchanged with other competition authorities and international organizations, and interest was expressed in ways of detecting competition violations that the Commission had in its practice.