OECD Competition Trends 2025

Executive summary

This report presents the main trends in global competition enforcement in 2023 based on the OECD Competition Trends annual survey of competition authorities (CompStats).

The report is divided into three chapters:

• Chapter ‎1 takes an in focus look at the evolution of competition authority resources. It explores the overall increasing trend for average competition authority budgets and staff. The focus was chosen because the increasing trend has been one of the most consistent trends in the CompStats database and links with several broader themes in competition policy. The chapter discusses how the recent evolution in competition policy may have led to a need for increased resources, how the overall trend masks a disparity in resource changes between authorities and how, for newer jurisdictions, resource growth may simply be the result of initial capability building.

• Chapter ‎2 provides an overview of the evolution of competition enforcement in all, OECD and non-OECD participating jurisdictions, presenting the aggregated information collected across all competition enforcement indicators in CompStats, including Cartels, Abuse of Dominance, Mergers and Market Studies.

• Chapter ‎3 presents snapshots of the trends in competition enforcement in each of the four geographical regions (Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East and Africa (MEA)).

The OECD CompStats database currently includes nine years of data across 69 jurisdictions. The complete list of jurisdictions is included in the Annex, together with the lists of the competition authorities that provided data for each jurisdiction. An Excel file with a complete set of graphs covering all competition enforcement indicators, i.e. all indicators on all years (2015‑23), can be found on the OECD Competition Trends publication website.

In focus: Trends in resources

On average, staff numbers and budgets increased in 2023 for both OECD and non-OECD jurisdictions continuing a long running trend. The increase in budgets on average was 4.7% in real terms in 2023 with a similar 3.1% increase in staff. This, however, is not consistent across all jurisdictions, with 25 seeing real term budget cuts and 29 authorities seeing staff numbers fall or remain constant in 2023.

There are several possible reasons which may explain the general trend of increasing resources. The possible reasons include:

• competition authorities receiving additional powers/responsibilities,

• increasing attempts by authorities to pro-actively detect anti-competitive conduct,

• the increasing complexity in proving infringements, and

• the strengthening of the authority whenever the regime is new or under consolidation.

Further research would be needed to ascertain whether these are the most relevant drivers of resources and if so, whether the increase in resources will lead to greater future enforcement activity.

Main trends in competition enforcement

This section covers the key developments in 2023 for cartel enforcement, abuse of dominance enforcement, merger control and market studies. Resources is covered in a standalone chapter.

Cartel Enforcement – Overall cartel investigations increased in 2023 driven by strong growth in non-OECD jurisdictions. The trend in rising leniency applications has also continued with 383 leniency applications in 2023, the highest level since 2016. While the number of cartel decisions has fallen, the share of bid rigging cases has increased in the last two years, and construction ranked as the industry with the highest number of cartel decisions in 2023.

Abuse of Dominance (AoD) enforcement – The number of AoD investigations increased by 56% in 2023 reversing the sharp decline in 2022 but remains lower than any year prior to 2020. The trend for increasingly using dawn raids for AoD investigations has also continued, with the highest number of dawn raids for AoD investigations being in 2023 compared with previous years.

Mergers – Total merger notifications fell in 2023 continuing the decline from 2022 after the sharp increase in 2021. This represents a return to a more typical level seen over the last 9 years. Total merger interventions from authorities however, remained high in 2023. There was a sharp increase in withdrawn mergers and the share of merger decisions with remedies is now at its highest level in the last 9 years, with 3.2% of mergers decisions requiring remedies. While prohibitions overall decreased in 2023, in OECD jurisdictions, the last 3 years have all seen higher levels of prohibitions than in any year prior to 2021.

Market studies –There was a 24% decrease in OECD jurisdictions’ market studies concluded in 2023, but a 22% increase in studies conducted by non-OECD jurisdictions. This meant overall the trend has remained relatively stable. The most common industries studied were Retail Trade, Information, and Transportation and Warehousing.