FIRST COMMON EASTERN EUROPEAN COMPETITION WORKSHOP BY U.S. FTC AND LITHUANIAN COMPETITION AUTHORITY GATHERS FOREIGN COMPETITION EXPERTS

September 4 marked the start of a two-day  Eastern European Competition Workshop in Vilnius. The event, which was organised by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in partnership with the Lithuanian competition authority Konkurencijos taryba, gathered almost 50 competition experts from Lithuania, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine.

The event participants engaged in the discussions on market definition, anti-competitive agreements, organizing investigations and similar topics. Quite a lot of attention during the workshop was paid to analyzing the examples of antitrust cases from the FTC’s practice, the most effective methods for gathering evidence, and sharing international experience with Eastern European competition authorities.

The Council Member Dina Lurje noted that co-organizing such event with the FTC recognizes that internationally Konkurencijos taryba has considerable experience which can benefit other European competition authorities when solving competition problems that they face with.

Competition authorities aknowledge the growing need for economics when examining mergers or conducting investigations into anti-competitive agreements. It will be interesting to hear more about the experience of different countries in using the economic tools.

Dina Lurje, Council Member

During the event one of the keynote speakers Maria Dimoscato said she was happy to discuss not only why, but also how FTC does investigations, as well as to share the authority’s best practices and lessons learned with competition institutions from Europe.

FTC has been organizing Eastern European competition workshops since 2007.