On September 20, Alexey Ivanov, Director of the International BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre, spoke at the special session themed “Cooperation of the BRICS Countries in the sphere of Antimonopoly Policy: the View of Regulators and Lawyers”. The session was held as part of the 9th BRICS Legal Forum, which took place on September 19-20 in Moscow at the MGIMO University.
The participants of the session were invited to consider the most relevant aspects of interaction among practitioners of antimonopoly regulation and competition authorities of the BRICS countries, to identify common ground and priority steps for further work.. The meeting was moderated by Denis Gavrilov, Deputy Head of the Competition Law Department, Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL).
In his speech Alexey Ivanov noted that the format of highly formalized contacts established in the Soviet times harms those forms of live interaction, which now have the greatest value for the development of the economy, society and the state. At the same time, grassroots social and economic interaction is of particular importance for antimonopoly law. The state of competition, the dynamics of competitive relations are evaluative concepts that cannot be measured accurately. Therefore, courts and legal institutions are guided by evaluative constructs — people's satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the work of markets.
“In order to form this assessment, there must be constant active interaction between consumers, small businesses, and even large digital platforms,”
Ivanov explained.
Despite instability and crises, globalization is intensifying and competition law acts as a tool that is designed to even out imbalances in the development of the world economy and any capitalist system as a whole.
The BRICS Centre, with the assistance of the FAS of Russia, has initiated a large-scale sectoral study, under which the antimonopoly agencies of the BRICS countries will unite to study the global value chain in the grain trade sector. The study will identify barriers to market entry, bottlenecks in the chain and reasons for high grain price volatility.
“It is very important to us that grain exports are carried out in a competitive environment, so that we can understand what forces influence price dynamics in this market.”
emphasized the Director of the BRICS Centre.
Such sectoral studies can become a useful tool for antitrust authorities of the BRICS countries and a basis for taking real measures to balance the global economy not only in grain trade, but also in the pharmaceutical and digital sectors. As a result, the working environment for business will improve and consumer satisfaction will increase.
An example of effective cooperation in the antitrust sphere is the cooperation between the United States and the European Union within the OECD. The organization has a competition committee and bilateral formats of interaction, which are supported by a constant dialogue between officials, companies and lawyers not only in the format of regular meetings and conferences, but also in the format of everyday work. In Russia, the legal community has yet to develop so-called business diplomacy, interaction at the horizontal, grassroots level.
“Unlike other branches of law, competition law has a lot of common principles. This makes it possible to make similar decisions based on common principles at the grassroots level to protect the interests of BRICS consumers and economic development. In this sense, I see a huge potential for the legal community to develop such cooperation,”
Alexey Ivanov said.
Gian Marco Solas, Leading Expert, BRICS Competition Law & Policy Centre, also spoke at the session. He touched upon the problem of access to justice for business and shared his experience in filing antitrust class actions with the participation of third-party investors who cover legal costs in exchange for interest. Gian Marco built one of the largest third party funded European collective redress initiatives in the EU truck cartel. As part of the initiative, he has managed to create a technology platform that has brought together more than 2,000 Italian companies. “I think the combination of third-party funding and legal tech is a good combination,” he said.
Other speakers at the session included Andrey Tsyganov, Deputy Head of the FAS of Russia; Amulya Dhingra, member of the Executive Committee, The Bar Association of India; Natalia Korosteleva, Partner, Head of Competition Law Practice, EPAM Law Offices, and Valeria Ponomareva, Counsel, Expert in Competition Law, NEXTONS.
The Forum serves as an open, permanent platform for legal cooperation and professional exchange of experiment and ideas between lawyers of the BRICS countries, promotion of “legal diplomacy”, rapprochement of legal communities of the Member States, legal theory and practice exchange, use of law as an instrument for economic cooperation and social development of certain countries, strengthening the rule of law and improving of international law, working together to improve the status of lawyers, development of legal profession, establishing comprehensive cooperation with international legal institutions. The main goals of the Forum are to promote legal assistance of economic cooperation, to implement major infrastructure projects as well as to develop international financial and legal institutions, to increase the independence of national economies from negative processes of the world market.
