Collaboration To Promote Competition With Advanced Competition Authorities
- Attending the '3rd Competition Authority Heads' Meeting hosted by the US Competition Authority -
Cho Hong-sun, vice chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission, will attend the "3rd Enfers Summit" jointly hosted by the U.S. competition authority, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Ministry of Justice (DOJ), in Washington on April 8 (Monday).
As with the first and second meetings in 2022 and 2023, the meeting will be attended by the FTC Chairman (Lina Khan), the DOJ Anti-trust Bureau Assistant Secretary (Jonathan Kanter), the European Commission Commissioner for Competition (Olivier Gerseong), as well as the heads of major competition authorities in Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, India, and Spain.
Meanwhile, the meeting will share best practices and experiences from each country in relation to cross-governmental cooperation measures to promote market competition, and focus on competition issues in the food supply chain amid the economic crisis of rising food prices.
First, regarding cross-governmental cooperation to promote market competition, the United States is expected to introduce successful cooperation between competition authorities and federal regulators after President Biden's "Administrative Order on Promotion of Competition in the U.S. Economy" in 2021.
Immediately after President Biden's executive order, the U.S. has formed the White House Competition Council, which will involve more than a dozen ministries, and has established and promoted policies to promote competition in various fields, including the announcement of amendments to the business combination guidelines through a total of six semiannual meetings starting with the first meeting in September 2021 and through March 2024.
Next, when it comes to competition issues within the food supply chain, we discuss actions and business combinations that could potentially have the effect of limiting competition within the food supply chain.
In this regard, the 6th meeting of the White House Competition Committee recently drew attention by announcing that it would form a "Strike Force on Fair and Illegal Pricing" to block companies from raising prices in unfair, deceptive, or competitive ways.
The KFTC plans to actively participate in discussions on the topics of this meeting to listen to each country's success stories and introduce the FTC's achievements.
First of all, Vice Chairman Cho plans to introduce the results of quickly approving business combinations through active cooperation with other ministries in accordance with laws or business agreements (MOUs) in the business combination review.
In addition, in the process of improving regulations that limit market competition, success stories of cross-governmental cooperation to promote competition will be shared with each country, focusing on the experience of drawing alternatives through continuous communication between the KFTC and related ministries.
Next, regarding competition issues in the food supply chain, the KFTC plans to explain that it will discover regulations that hinder new entry or restrict business activities through market analysis in the baking and liquor sectors this year and come up with measures to improve them.
In addition, Vice Chairman Cho presents the current status and performance of the voluntary reporting system and the reporting reward system in operation to encourage reporting of collusion, as well as cases in which the KFTC detects collusion in cooperation with the Public Procurement Service or public institutions.
In particular, the contents and performance of the Bid Rigging Indicator Analysis System (BRIAS), which is used to detect bid rigging in the public sector, will also be explained.
The meeting will also discuss ways to investigate algorithmic collusion and promote competition in the field of artificial intelligence (hereinafter referred to as "AI"), and the KFTC plans to publish an "AI Policy Report" at the end of the year to discover and analyze competition restrictions and consumer issues in the AI market.
Following the 3rd Competition Authority Heads Meeting, Vice Chairman Cho will hold bilateral consultations with Jonathan Kanter, Deputy Secretary of the DOJ Antitrust Bureau, Rebecca Kelly Slutter, and Alberto Bakiega, Director of the European Commission's Digital Platform Bureau, respectively.
Through this meeting, the KFTC will actively participate in global discussions on the latest issues in competition policy and law enforcement, while promoting the KFTC's various efforts to respond to challenges in the new technology market to the international community.
In the future, the KFTC will continue to make efforts to reflect Korea's perspective and position by actively participating in the discussion process between competition authorities to establish new norms according to market changes.