Coperation in the Field of Competition Enforcement: Takeaways for National Competition Authorities from the Prevailing International Legal Landscape

This unit was published in „International Cooperation of Competition Authorities in Europe: from Bilateral Agreements to Transgovernmental Networks” Błachucki, M., ed., (2020).

Competition authorities are liable to cooperate with one another on many levels, through formal and less formal channels, with exchanges ranging from general policy considerations to case-specific intelligence and evidence. Where applicable, the legal bases for such cooperation vary in nature, scope and depth. The state of play as regards cooperation arrangements outside the EU provides a useful backdrop against which to assess the specificities and limitations of enabling instruments at the EU level. In particular, the glaring gap between existing frameworks for cooperation among NCAs in, antitrust and merger control matters does not necessarily reflect the prevailing situation outside the EU, or models advocated in international fora such as the OECD. This underscores the specific historical and political underpinning of the current EU legal framework. As regards the particularly potent instruments for cooperation established under Regulation 1/2003, there is also room for deepening and expanding, as illustrated by the recently adopted Directive 2019/1. Again, non-EU international arrangements can inform and have indeed informed, perhaps surprisingly, the course chosen to improve these cooperation instruments.