Collaboration protocol concluded between the Competition Council and ANCOM

Today, the President of the Competition Council, Bogdan Chiritoiu, and the President of the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), Catalin Marinescu, have signed a new collaboration protocol with a view to ensure and promote competition in the electronic communications, audio-visual communications and postal services sectors.

The document establishes the modalities whereby the two institutions will try to evenly enforce the competition general legislation and the communications legislation in view of protecting the end-users’ rights and interests.

“This new protocol reinforces the already traditional collaboration between the Competition Council and ANCOM. The expertise of ANCOM alongside the experience of the Competition Council in investigating certain specific cases will definitely provide the communications market with a real competition and with players observing the rules, to the welfare of the end-users”, Mr. Bogdan Chiritoiu, President of the Competition Council stated.

“We have renewed this protocol to update it and we intend to further enforce it since, on grounds of its older version, we intensely collaborated with the Competition Council in the past. ANCOM made available to the Competition Council the information required to investigate possible cases of economic concentration, anticompetitive agreements or abuses of dominant power involving providers of electronic communications services or of postal services, and the Competition Council provided its point of view regarding our market analyses. ANCOM’s attribution, i.e. the expertise specific to the communications sector, was thus completed by the Competition Council’s attribution, i.e. sanctioning of the anticompetitive behaviour” Catalin Marinescu, the President of ANCOM, itemized.

This protocol will be implemented, among other, by means of the following tools: the setting up of joint expert teams, the initiation of certain activities necessary for both institutions to study the market (i.e. market studies and analyses, displaying in the mass-media, at a large scale, the legislation, measures and activities related to the competitive environment and to the functioning of the electronic communications, audio-visual communications and postal services sectors).

The reciprocal exchange of information will be completed by data collected during meetings with economic agents activating in the electronic communications and postal services markets. These meetings will allow to efficiently identify the problems the economic agents deal with when it comes to the enforcement of the relevant regulations.

The teams of the two institutions will permanently collaborate in order to know as accurate as possible the abovementioned sectors, as well as to prevent and discourage the anticompetitive practices.

The Competition Council is the administrative body aimed at protecting and stimulating competition in order to ensure a normal competitive environment, with a view towards the consumers’ interests. More information is available at www.consiliulconcurentei.ro