Harmonise antitrust enforcement to enhance competition

Klaus F. Becher: "Business is working with increasing commitment to effective antitrust convergence."

Paris, 21 November 2002 - The chair of ICC's taskforce on the International Competition Network, Klaus F. Becher, has told the Fordham Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy that antitrust enforcement needed to be harmonised around the world in the interests of business.

During his address, Mr Becher said shared principles of competition policy in jurisdictions around the world would benefit the economies of both developed and developing countries.

The ICC taskforce works closely with the International Competition Network (ICN) - a network of competition practitioners from both the public and private sector. It was launched at last year's Fordham Conference with the aim of promoting more effective antitrust enforcement worldwide.

Mr Becher said: "More and more business activities transcend - or should I say ignore - national boundaries.

"Therefore, business is working with increasing commitment to effective antitrust convergence and to assist competition agencies in their efforts to make these regimes hopefully harmonious, at least transparent, non-discriminatory and simpler."

He stressed that involvement of the private sector and ICN's Non-Governmental Advisors, such as ICC, was "very important for the success of most of the concrete programs of ICN."

ICC has been actively involved with ICN and worked with the Business Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) to produce the joint best practices paper for merger review. This paper provided the basis of a report presented at the first ICN Conference held in Naples in September.

Click here to view:

Full summary of Klaus Becher's presentation.

Joint ICC/BIAC recommended framework for best practices [pdf]

ICC Commission on Competition

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