The OECD Global Forum on Competition brings together every year competition officials from over 110 authorities and organisations worldwide.
In 2018, the Forum opened with a session on how competition authorities can contribute to fairer societies followed by a keynote address from Margrethe Vestager (European Commissioner for Competition) and sessions on: regional competition agreements, competition and gender, investigative powers in practice and competition law and SOEs.
This session explored the concept of fairness, whether and how it can relate to competition and what fairness can mean in practical terms to competition enforcers. A keynote address was delivered by Margrethe Vestager (European Commissioner for Competition).
The majority of trade agreements include a competition policy chapter or individual competition provisions. This discussion considered the purpose and impact of these competition provisions in practice, to discuss their usefulness in broadening and strengthening the application of competition law worldwide.
This roundtable adressed 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.
Competition authorities assume a crucial and challenging mission: protecting competition in the markets. This mission requires intensive evidence and data gathering. This session discussed practical issues and shared best practices regarding the use of investigative powers through three breakout sessions on:
Like private firms, State-owned enterprises (SOEs) might seek to maximise profit, even if they ultimately re-invest the surplus that they earn. This roundtable discussion looked at investigations into anticompetitive conduct mergers, and agreements by SOEs, both those owned or controlled by a competition authority’s own government, and those owned or controlled by other governmentsThe aim of this session was to open up for discussion issues concerning the role of choice and competition in public markets, and the enforcement of competition law in those markets.
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