The meeting of the BRICS Coordination Committee on Antimonopoly Policy, held under the auspices of the Russian Chairmanship, took place on July 2, 2024 in Geneva. The event brought together the heads of the BRICS competition authorities, including Brazil, India, China, Russia, South Africa as well as the new members – Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and UAE.
The event underscored the commitment of BRICS member countries to fostering a competitive environment that benefits both businesses and consumers. The Russian side brought forward the proposal that an enhanced cooperation platform be launched to institutionalize and thus further deepen the BRICS partnership towards an inclusive, diverse, and just economic order – the BRICS Global Action Platform on Fair Market Competition developed by BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre. Representatives of antitrust agencies participating in the event expressed their support to initiate the next stage of institutionalization of antitrust cooperation. The BRICS Centre will provide intellectual resources to facilitate the launch of the Action Platform.
Additionally, the meeting focused on the widening of BRICS and the procedure for new member countries to join the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of Competition Law and Policy of the BRICS countries signed on May 19, 2016, in St. Petersburg. During the meeting, attendees also shared the main significant results of the BRICS competition authorities’ activities, highlighting the progress made in promoting fair competition practices and addressing antimonopoly issues. Finally, the participants adopted a Joint Statement of the Heads of the BRICS Competition Authorities on consolidation of efforts to maintain healthy competition in socially significant markets.
“During the Russian presidency, taking into account the BRICS expansion, a window of opportunity opens, allowing to bring antitrust cooperation in the BRICS format to a new qualitative level. In the future, this will include joint investigations into the activities of international cartels, global monopolies and economic concentration transactions. The need for this is recognized by both the expert community of our countries and antitrust regulators, as demonstrated by the results of an in-depth survey conducted by the BRICS International Center for Competition Law and Policy previous year,” – said Alexey Ivanov, Director of the BRICS Competition Law and Policy Centre.
The core function of the proposed Action Platform is to assist competition authorities in their enforcement activities by providing the necessary technical and analytical assistance as well as supporting the development and enlargement of expertise and research on competition policy among the member states. The ambition is to establish a BRICS-focused center of expertise aimed at knowledge creation and knowledge sharing in the global market of ideas dominated currently by the legacy institutions of the West.
“This platform, if implemented, will allow antitrust regulators of the BRICS countries to more actively influence the global architecture of economic relations. This is a mechanism for harmonizing positions on how to jointly influence the global economy, global markets and global value chains. The BRICS governments have already supported the idea of creating a grain exchange, and this initiative also represents an element of integration and facilitation of agreements in other sectoral areas. Oversight of industries organized in global value chains requires an approach nested in a three-dimensional, value chain perspective as opposed to narrow, geographically bound markets. Flexible joint cooperation formats involving jurisdictions at different value chain segments can provide a balanced response thus creating a value chain of regulators,” Ivanov concluded.
