The EU Competition and State Aid Twinning Project is coming to an end and will hold a final conference on 13 March 2013 in Yerevan.

 

During the last two years EU experts helped the Armenian Competition Authority to improve its organisational structure and procedures and made recommendations on increasing the efficiency of the SCPEC’s performance. According to the Project Leader Mr Wolf Dieter Plessing the mutual efforts of the EU Twinning experts and Armenian partners were successful. “We have laid a good foundation for the further improvement and development of the enforcement abilities of the Armenian Competition Authority,” Mr Plessing said. “The knowledge of our Armenian colleagues has increased measurably during our cooperation, especially in the area of competition legislation,” he added.

 

RA SCPEC Chairman A. Shaboyan reflected on the activities implemented within the scope of the Twinning Project highlighting the fact that the Project has contributed to the development of the institutional capacities of the Commission. In his speech the Chairman underlined that the support provided by the  EU short-term experts contributed to increased performance of the Commission, which is reflected in a number of indicators. “The amount of fines imposed for anticompetitive actions in 2011 equals to the total of all fines imposed during ten years of operation of the Commission. Hence, since 2010 active efforts have been taken to fight infringements of the competition law. Specifically, while in 2008 and 2009 the Commission adopted 31 decisions on imposing sanctions against undertakings, this indicator was 107 in 2010, 1097 in 2011 and 215 in 2012. During the mentioned period the total amount of fines imposed on the undertakings is more than 245 million AMD”, said A. Shaboyan. The Chairman addressed the 2012-13 Global Competitiveness Report, according to which Armenia has recorded progress in a number indicators. Particularly, Armenia has improved its position by 43 points in line of “existence of dominant power on the market” indicator, by 22 points in line of efficiency of antitrust policy and by 9 points in line of improvement of local competition. It should be noted that other countries of the region have mainly recorded regress in line of these indicators.

Another crucial step has been taken in the field of regulation of the competition legislation. To improve existing Armenian legislation and bring it closer to EU standards, the EU experts drafted amendments to the Armenian competition law and prepared a draft law on state aid control. The Twinning project also organised a series of seminars and roundtables to raise awareness among Armenian stakeholders on competition and state aid legislation, as well as study visits to EU MS competition authorities.

 

This Twinning Project is financed by the European Union with the total amount of 1.1 million EUR. The Project commenced on 29 January 2011 and was implemented by a German-Lithuanian Consortium, represented by the Federal Ministry of Germany and the Competition Council of Lithuania.

 

Chairman of SCPEC and BC project Mr Artak Shaboyan,  Minister of Economy, Mr Tigran Davtyan  and the Head of the EU Delegation to Armenia, H.E. Ambassador Traian Hristea  delivered welcome speeches.
MS Project Leader Mr Wolf Dieter Plessing made an introductory speech. The outputs of the project will be presented by RTA, Mr Sarunas Pajarskas and RTA Counterpart Ms Karine Poladyan.

 

During this Twinning Project seminars and round tables have been organized with participation of 106 journalists, 156 staff of state authorities and non-governmental organizations, 28 judges and 61 staff of regional authorities. 33 staff members of RA SCPEC and 1 journalist covering the economic domain have participated in study tours to European countries.