Workshop on advocating for competitive neutrality in regulation and state support

This workshop provided competition officials worldwide with an opportunity to share experiences and discuss challenges and lessons learnt from their advocacy activities for maintaining competitive neutrality in the regulatory framework and in state support measures.

Topics for discussion  included the impact of regulatory and policy reforms; monitoring and implementation; and leveraging past results to advocate for further reform.

Some 150 competition officials attended the discussions either online or in Paris.

• Competition authorities are very active in promoting a level playing field between competitors, using many different formal and informal tools -  opinions on primary and secondary legislation, legal challenges to local authorities’ acts, advice on how to structure state support to minimise distortions to competition, and studies on the ex-post impact of state support.
  
• Constructive engagement with local authorities is important for several competition authorities, especially in the area of in-house provision of services, with municipalities often engaging in economic activities in competition with private local suppliers
• Competition authorities can step up their advocacy to ensure that state support has clear objectives, is targeted to achieve these objectives while minimising distortions of competition, and its ex-post impact on competition and on the market is evaluated
• The OECD Competitive Neutrality Toolkit sets out a range of good practices and examples which can support competition authorities in their advocacy, including when collaborating with other authorities and regulators at all levels of government