International Cooperation between Antitrust Authorities

Introduction

A rising number of mergers and cooperation projects are falling within the scope of several antitrust jurisdictions at the same time.
This is causing a considerable amount of bureaucracy and legal uncertainty to enterprises, since national antitrust legislations and procedures differ considerably from each other.
Understandably enough, national antitrust authorities are greatly interested in increased cooperation, especially through the exchange of information in the individual cases notified, and in coordinating their decisions:

The globalisation of markets and competition has created new challenges for business as well as antitrust authorities.
The ICC perceives advantages to exist from a levelling of the playing field in which the business community is not subjected to conflicting requirements. The ICC therefore supports the concept of carefully evolving convergence of national competition laws.

This process may be facilitated by increased cooperation between antitrust authorities. However, one should not under-estimate the problems caused by the current differences between antitrust laws both in substance and in procedure.
ICC members in Europe think that with the current low level of substantive convergence, cooperation between antitrust authorities should not include the exchange of confidential information. In their view, this is especially true with respect to cooperation between the United States and the European Union.
Other ICC members, mainly in North America, think that convergence need not be a precondition for closer cooperation between antitrust authorities as the antitrust laws of particularly the United States and the European Union are already broadly similar.
However, a serious concern shared by all ICC members is that information exchanged should be properly protected.
Most importantly, unless doing so would jeopardize an investigation, enterprises should be notified of any proposed exchange and granted an opportunity to be heard.
In addition, numerous other safeguards are required which are set out above.
The ICC also points out that, besides information sharing agreements, other forms of cooperation are possible that do not raise the problems discussed above.
The Microsoft case demonstrates that ad hoc cooperation with the companies' consent may also be useful to companies and enforcement agencies alike.