How resilient is anti-cartel policy in Central and Eastern Europe?

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• the Robert Schuman Centre Seminar Series

Join Jasminka Pecotic Kaufman, Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre as she presents her recent research.

In some Central and Eastern European countries, vigorous competition law enforcement comes at a great cost for national competition authorities (NCAs). Non-volitional leadership changes, enforcement intensity slowdowns, and controversial judicial rebukes destabilise the development of competition systems. On the contrary, other jurisdictions in the region have developed a focused and forward-looking competition policy while building a steady enforcement tradition.

In her previous research Pecotic Kaufman indicates that despite the prohibition of cartels being a central norm in the transplanted competition system under EU law, the NCAs’ activities to enforce this prohibition encounters difficulties due to a collusive economic culture in some post-socialist EU Member States.

This research compares the cartel enforcement track record and institutional capacities (budget, staff) of selected Central and Eastern European NCAs, testing the hypothesis that, in those countries, cartel prohibition is counter-cultural and that its enforcement provokes long-term competition system instability or decline. The concept of institutional resilience is employed to explain the apparent differences between the post-socialist EU Member States in this regard.