A milestone has been reached for merger review and international competition advocacy after the inaugural International Competition Network conference, attended by top officials of 61 antitrust agencies world-wide.
"This was the first meeting of the new ICN", ACCC Chairman, Professor Allan Fels, said today in Naples. "The ICN is a very significant initiative in international cooperation on competition policy.
"The ICN is strongly supported by the United States, the European Union and other major forces around the world in the field of competition law.
"Its establishment is the culmination of more than a year's meetings held between top competition officials from around the world.
"The ICN has a steering committee, of which Australia is a member.
"Whilst there are a number of other bodies concerned with international competition policy – OECD, WTO (which now includes competition as an item for discussion under the current round of trade negotiations), UNCTAD – the ICN is seen as particularly important because of the strength of support from major countries and also because of the involvement of developing countries, as well as the private sector.
"The ICN aims to improve competition law enforcement and administration to benefit business and consumers. It draws its expertise from antitrust agencies, the private sector, academia and other international organisations.
"It is project-focused with consensus decisions. Proposals are non-binding on individual countries but once adopted tend to bring about convergence.
"Since it began, the ICN has concentrated on multi-jurisdictional merger review and the role of competition advocacy.
"This conference has moved forward in determining how competition agencies can bring about substantial and procedural convergence worldwide.
"ICN members have adopted Guiding Principles for Merger Notification and Review which recognise overarching notification principles of sovereignty, transparency, non-discrimination, procedural fairness, timeliness, coordination, convergence and confidentiality.
"Also approved were Recommended Practices for Merger Notification Procedures. The approval realises a common recognition of the concepts of jurisdictional interests, the development of justifiable and understandable merger notification thresholds, and resolution of differing approaches to the timing of merger notifications. These recommended practices are very interesting but they are, in some ways, not so relevant because Australia is amongst a minority of OECD countries that do not have compulsory pre-merger notification.
"The studies which gave rise to the guiding principles and recommended practices were based on very substantial inputs from competition authorities all around the world including Australia and involve a great deal of detail, meetings and preparations.
"The competition advocacy discussions focused on an Advocacy Study which, among other things addressed the role of advocacy, its political influences and approaches in developing countries.
"The importance of advocacy to the ability of competition agencies to promote economic development and procompetitive reform within government is underpinned in the report.
"The ICN has also established a working group on capacity building and competition policy implementation".