For the tenth consecutive year, the Competition Council of Latvia (CC) has maintained its high three-star rating in the international Global Competition Review (GCR), ranking among the world’s leading competition authorities. The competition authorities of Belgium, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland and other countries were ranked in the same position as Latvia. There are now competition authorities in more than 140 countries in the world, but only 29 of them are ranked by the GCR.
The 2024 ranking of the world’s leading competition authorities positively highlights the authority’s efficiency in combining the authority’s high-quality skills in defending decisions in litigation, cartel investigations and merger control processes between market participants with the development of the authority’s strategic plan and capacity building.
“It is no coincidence that the CC has maintained its position and three stars in the prestigious ranking of competition authorities for ten consecutive years – the high evaluation demonstrates the stable position of the CC among other highly rated competition authorities worldwide. In 2023, the CC invested a substantial amount of work in its long-term development, strategy, digitisation and IT capacity matters, as well as prevented 4 prohibited agreements, imposing fines totalling almost EUR 7 million on 10 companies while at the same time organising 50 promotion events of competition culture for companies and public entities, thus strengthening public understanding of fair competition. This international recognition is further evidence of the systematic and high-quality work which provides motivation for continuing the ongoing research and initiatives to implement a fair competition environment in Latvia to the benefit of all consumers,” says Juris Gaiķis, Chairman of the CC.
Independent competition law practitioners positively rated the authority’s skills in defending decisions positively, scoring 5 out of 5. The CC thus received the highest score among all the countries ranked in the category “Success before the courts”.
In 2023, seven cases were concluded, and the authority’s decisions were upheld in all cases. For example, the Senate ruled that the CC’s decision on the participation of the Kurši trading house in a cartel of construction material manufacturers and traders was justified, and the company paid a fine of more than EUR 1 million to the State budget. The Court also upheld the CC’s decision on the cartel in the public procurements of video, sound, lighting and stage equipment distributors. After 10 years of litigation, the proceedings in the abuse of a dominant position case, which is important in Latvian and EU competition law enforcement practice, were also concluded with a positive result, upholding the CC’s decision finding the abuse of the monopoly position by the Copyright and Communication Consulting Agency/Latvian Authors Association.
The prestigious rating of global competition authorities is the main and only evaluator of the competitiveness and efficiency of competition authorities. It is published annually by the GCR, the world’s leading competition policy and law publication. This is already the 24th quality rating, where institutions are rated from two to five stars. The assessment takes into account indicators such as the size of the institution, budget, staff, salary, number of cases investigated, complexity and duration, amount of fines imposed, merger supervision issues, the proportion of measures to promote competition culture in the institution, the capacity of the institution, etc.