EU COMPETITION TWINNING PROJECT IN UKRAINE: KICK OFF EVENT OUTLINES MAIN RESULTS TO ACHIEVE

On October 21, 2020, the Lithuanian, German and Romanian competition authorities partnering under the EU Twinning project “Legal and Enforcement Support to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU)“ met to discuss the key priorities and results that they aim to achieve during the project implementation.

Over 40 representatives of relevant authorities of Ukraine, including AMCU as the main beneficiary, high-level decision makers, EU Delegation to Ukraine and other stakeholders attended the online event.

The project implementation partners and AMCU agreed that the competition enforcement priorities and procedures must be enhanced to become more robust and transparent. This will generate trust and understanding of the private sector, improve the quality of AMCU decisions and foster competition culture in Ukraine. The AMCU’s PR and competition advocacy efforts with both businesses and the Ukrainian society at large also need further improvement to change the misleading perceptions of the competition legislation and the AMCU’s role. This will be achieved by a dedicated team of European and Ukrainian experts who will work closely together along the way.

Šarūnas Keserauskas, Chairman of the Competition Council of the Republic of Lithuania, the Twinning project leader, commented: “The main objective of the 2-year Twinning project carried out in tripartite partnership of the Competition Council of the Republic of Lithuania, German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy together with the Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt), as well as the Romanian Competition Council, is to assist AMCU in further approximation of local competition law and procedures with EU competition rules, and share the best European practices relating to antitrust enforcement, merger control and competition advocacy.“

Olha Pishchanska, head of AMCU, stated: “We are lucky to have our long-standing partners, our fellows from the Lithuanian, German and Romanian competition regulatory authorities. At the same time, we are certain that our mutual efforts will help to achieve the expected results and will contribute to the improvement of competition protection system in Ukraine”.

The Twinning project is funded by the European Union with a contribution of EUR 1.2 million. The Lithuanian Central Project Management Agency ensures the overall project administrative and financial management.

Background: Twinning is a European Union instrument for institutional cooperation bringing together public sector expertise from EU Member States and beneficiary countries through peer to peer activities. Twinning aims to provide support for the transposition, implementation and enforcement of the EU legislation (the Union acquis) and strives to share good practices developed within the EU with beneficiary public administrations and to foster long-term relationships between administrations of existing and future EU countries.

Press release (175.7 KB )