Speaking Notes for Sheridan Scott Commissioner of Competition

and
Chair of the International Competition Network Steering Group

Competition Bureau

Opening Remarks
6^th Annual Conference of the
International Competition Network
Moscow, Russia

May 30, 2007

(Check against delivery)

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President Putin, Prime Minister Fradkov, Minister Gref, Mayor Luzhkov, Commissioner Kroes, Mr. Artemieve, friends and competition colleagues:

On behalf of the Steering Group, I am honoured to be here today to welcome you to the International Competition Network's (ICN) 6^th Annual Conference.

Let me begin by extending our thanks to our host, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (the FAS), for organizing this event. I also acknowledge and thank the Government of the Russian Federation and the City of Moscow for their support, which has made it possible for this years' Conference to take place in the wonderful city of Moscow.

Thanks for receiving us. I am happy we are here (Translated from Russian).

As a competition community, it is our responsibility to work together to promote a competition culture around the world. And the breadth of the ICN membership today will help us to do exactly that. This year, the ICN celebrates an important milestone, with our membership reaching 100 competition agencies from around the world. We have reached this milestone in a very short period of time. Indeed, it was less than 6 years ago that anti-trust officials from 16 agencies launched a unique organization, one devoted exclusively to competition law enforcement.

Amongst these 100 agencies, I am pleased to say, is a growing number of members from young competition authorities in transition economies. Their participation assists us greatly as we pursue our two principal goals:

1. Promoting greater substantive and procedural convergence among antitrust authorities; and
2. Providing support for new antitrust agencies, both in enforcing their law, and in building strong competition cultures in their countries.

We have much to be proud of in our short history of pursuing these goals.

In the area of merger review, we have worked to enhance our effectiveness and reduce the public and private time and cost of multi-jurisdictional assessements. The development of benchmarks for merger notification and guidelines used in the substantive assessment of mergers demonstrate concrete progress in this initiative.

We have also focussed on building capacity and adopting a common approach to substantive analysis in merger review. Our merger workshops are one of our most successful efforts. In April of this year, the Irish Competition Authority and the UK Office of Fair Trading hosted the mergers workshop in Dublin and welcomed 110 participants. By all accounts, this workshop, like its predecessors, was a resounding success.

Our cartel work has focussed on ways to improve our ability to attack this most egregious form of anti-competitive behaviour. We have established benchmarks to provide operational and practical guidance aimed at making international cartel enforcement more effective, with the clear message to price fixers and bid-riggers that there is no place to hide in the increasingly global economy.

Meanwhile, the annual Cartel Workshop provides a venue for anti-cartel enforcers to share concrete experiences and techniques. The Netherlands Competition Authority hosted the successful 2006 ICN Cartels Workshop last November in The Hague, with representatives from younger agencies benefiting from a session dedicated to issues relating to cartels in transition economies.

This year we have begun to tackle the third pillar of antitrust law - unilateral conduct, a challenging issue characterized by the differing views and practices of competition authorities worldwide. I look forward to our discussions around the work of the Unilateral Conduct Working Group on this topic during the course of this conference.

As a forum that brings together both young and experienced agencies, the ICN is in a special position to assist younger agencies build their substantive and investigative capacities. So we have made capacity building a clear focus of the Competition Policy Implementation Group, looking at opportunities for increased contacts between experienced and younger competition authorities.

We have also shown an ability to carry out targeted and time limited sector-specific projects, encouraging the adoption of pro-competitive approaches to telecommunications and banking, two sectors that have traditionally been subject to extensive regulation. Importantly, competition authorities from transition economies have increasingly taken on leadership positions in the ICN's various working groups. Currently, 40 per cent of working group or subgroup chairs are from transition economies.

We should all be very proud of how much the ICN has accomplished in so few years. But much more remains to be done as we can see from our agenda for the next few days.

We must carry out this work, building upon the ICN's past success. We must find ways to promote and advocate for the adoption of ICN benchmarks and use of ICN work products by competition authorities around the world. We must seek opportunities to reach out to the full range of ICN member agencies and non-governmental advisors, including members of the academic, legal and economic communities, to involve them in our activities. We must further discover means to enhance relations between the ICN and other international organizations who pursue a pro-competition agenda.

One of the special characteristics of the ICN is that its members are uniquely competition enforcement agencies - this has brought greater focus to our efforts. Dr. Böge, my predecessor, referred to the ICN as an organization that was "All Competition - All the time." We should be very pleased that we have been able to come together as a competition community - as an agency-driven organization concentrating on the development of sound competition law principles and enforcement.

The next few days will provide us with the opportunity to reflect on the past year, renew old friendships, make new contacts, and re-energize ourselves as a competition community to work together in the year ahead to meet the challenges of promoting a competition culture in the global economy.

The working group Chairs, subgroup Chairs, and members have laboured tirelessly to bring together what I am sure you will agree is an exceptionally interesting program. I look forward to participating in a rich and open dialogue on these important competition issues.

Once again, it is my privilege to welcome you all to the 6^th Annual Conference of the International Competition Network.

Thank you.