Regional competition agreements (RCAs) hold great potential for both developed and developing jurisdictions by promoting convergence in competition laws and instruments, ensuring effective and efficient cross-border enforcement, and/or by supporting young authorities in their efforts to create a competition framework coherent with international standards. However, serious obstacles to the success of RCAs can undermine the harvesting these benefits.
In November 2018, the OECD Global Forum on Competition held a roundtable to explore the potential benefits, obstacles and challenges of regional competition agreements. Participants examined the approaches of the different geographic regions that have adopted a regional competition framework (including regional competition provisions and a regional competition authority) in order to strengthen their competition law and policy in their pursuit of increased regional integration. The session specifically focussed on RCAs between three or more jurisdictions (so excluding bilateral agreements) that are located in the same geographic region and have established regional competition provisions, as they usually offer deeper levels of integration and a higher degree of co-operation on competition enforcement than bilateral agreements.
The discussion was supported by an inventory of RCAs developed by the OECD that was shared in advance of the session.
