In collaboration with the University of New South Wales, UNCTAD presented its present and future activities before Heads and representatives of competition agencies, prior to the 15th Annual Conference of the International Competition Network (ICN).
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The event was opened by Deborah Healey Associate Professor Director, Corporate and Commercial of the LLM Programme on behalf of Professor David Dixon, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales.
UNCTAD presented the main themes of the forthcoming Seventh United Nations Conference to Review All Aspects of the Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices (UN Set), which will take place between 6th and 10th July 2015.
The Conference will include five roundtables (on issues ranging from inclusive and sustainable growth to the benefits to consumers of competition in the pharmaceuticals sector) the Voluntary Peer Reviews of Albania and of PNG and Fiji, discussions on the revision of the United Nations Guidelines on Consumer Protection and a panel discussion on the evaluation of UNCTAD's Voluntary Peer Review mechanism.
In the second part of the event, UNCTAD presented the GLOBAL COMPAL strategy for intervention in Competition and Consumer Protection worldwide, and the development of its component programmes.
This new strategy is meant to cover competition and consumer protection policies for all regions of the world; therefore the new meaning of "COMPAL" is now "Competition and Consumer Protection Policies for All".
At present, GLOBAL COMPAL strategy is being implemented in the MENA region through the COMPAL MENA Programme; Latin American region through the COMPAL III, and also through the ASEAN region with the launch of COMPAL ASEAN on sectorial consumer protection enforcement issues.
The third part was devoted to discuss competitive neutrality. Deborah Healey discussed the analysis and implementation of competitive neutrality policy, drawing upon the results of the Competitive Neutrality project completed under the auspices of the UNCTAD RPP.
The issue of the adoption of competitive neutrality frameworks is the third strategy of intervention of the GLOBAL COMPAL strategy and as such is one of the five central objectives of the COMPAL MENA programme and the COMPAL III Programme in Latin America.
More than 40 participants took part of the event and were able to pose valuable questions to the presenters in each of the topics delivered at the event. For instance, representatives from the EU discussed the importance of updating the UNCTAD Model Law on Competition and Russian representatives discussed the developmental dimension of the UN Set and how it has been triggered in different settings and countries.
In addition, CARICOM representatives discussed about the importance of UNCTAD's support towards regional groupings under the umbrella of the UN Set principle of special and differential treatment.
In addition, Mexico's representative praised the core objective of the COMPAL programme, which is working on long-term and day-to-day capacity building with competition case handlers at low and middle levels.
Representatives from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) highlighted the importance of working together with competition and consumer protection agencies and, sometimes how difficult is to, create a working environment that can bring about good results of this interaction of policies and views.