The Competition Council (CC) has developed work priorities of the authority for 2018. The most important priorities will include promoting understanding of market participants and public persons about free and fair competition, establishment and prevention of the most severe infringements of competition, as well as strengthening of the capacity of the CC by attracting professional employees.
When highlighting plans of 2018, the CC will continue active work on the promotion of competition culture in order to achieve bigger support from it for the idea of fair competition by informing and educating consumers, entrepreneurs and unions thereof, public persons, students and pupils. The society, being aware of the principles of competition, may see infringements and adverse circumstances for the competition and protect their rights to fair competition as well as not to permit infringements in their activity.
It is expected that the number of the most severe infringements of the Competition Law, in particular cartel agreements and abuse of dominant position, will not decrease in 2018. In order to prevent market participants from involvement in the infringements of prohibited agreements, it is planned to assess the need to introduce personal responsibility of officials. The leading officials of companies shall be responsible for introduction and maintenance of the supervision system in the company, thus the personal responsibility for infringements of competition law may motivate the employees to follow the principles of fair competition.
In order to proactively establish and prevent the signs of competition limitations, facilitating the development of markets and occurrence of innovations, the CC will continue to supervise the most important industries of the economy. The authority will continue also to analyse the reasons for the MTPL insurance price increase possibly taking place at the same time in 2017, to review reasonability for telecommunication tariffs increase as a result of cancellation of the roaming fee, as well as will draw attention to the financial, medical, security and transportation service markets.
Taking into account the amendments to the labour payment system of the CC supported by the Saeima (Parliament), as well as in order to strengthen the capacity of the authority and be able to attract and keep professional employees, the CC will continue the commenced work on the development of the new and motivating remuneration system. In accordance with the formulations of Strategy of the CC for 2017 - 2019, the authority would like to become as a demanded and popular employer, where experts of various industries would like to work for. So far the achievement of the purpose was difficult due to compensation to be applied within the framework of the uniform compensation system, which failed to be in compliance with the high level of requirements and complexity, caused by the work at the CC.
In 2018 the CC will take an active part also in the international environment, promoting the international visibility of Latvia, popularising the experience of the authority and strengthening the capability of investigation, when preparing for new challenges of the competition policy. It will be important for the CC to maintain the high position in the prestige Global Competition Review Rating Enforcement global rating of the leading competition authorities. When participating on the international level as well as acquiring recognition of foreign authorities and editions, the CC can ascertain on the effectiveness of the activities of the authority and compliance of the selected methods of activity with the international practice, as well as share experience with competition law enforcement authorities of other countries.
It should be noted that last year was the first year of fulfilment of the new operational strategy of the CC for three years (2017-2019). The new strategy provides for current tasks and challenges, focusing on elimination of risks in relation to insufficient capacity of the authority, inability of the free market to turn against distortions caused by public persons, establishment and prevention of infringements as well as use of new possibilities in the area of education and international activities.
You may become acquainted with more detailed information about priorities and tasks of the CC for 2018 here.