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Papadopoulos, Anestis --- "Bilateral Enforcement Cooperation Agreements" [2006] ELECD 542; in Marsden, Philip (ed), "Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Handbook of Research in Trans-Atlantic Antitrust

Editor(s): Marsden, Philip

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845421816

Section: Chapter 25

Section Title: Bilateral Enforcement Cooperation Agreements

Author(s): Papadopoulos, Anestis

Number of pages: 38

Extract:

25 Bilateral enforcement cooperation
agreements
Anestis Papadopoulos1


Common characteristics of enforcement cooperation agreements
Enforcement cooperation as a substitute/alternative to harmonization of
competition laws
Bilateral (and tripartite) enforcement cooperation agreements do not har-
monize the competition laws of the contracting parties. These agreements
provide for mechanisms of enforcement cooperation. In the field of com-
petition law enforcement cooperation has been used as an alternative/
substitute for harmonization of national competition laws. Since no agree-
ment on a multilateral code on restrictive business practices could be
achieved in the twentieth century, countries with active international trade
(through multinational firms) and a developed competition law had to
cooperate on enforcement of their competition laws in order to face the
consequences of restrictive business practices with an international effect.
Thus, as early as the late 1950s, when a conflict arose between the govern-
ments of Canada and the United States on a case relating to a US investi-
gation of a patent pool among Canadian radio and television makers
designed to exclude US manufactured products from the Canadian market,
the governments of US and Canada realized that they had to proceed into
negotiations in order to coordinate their enforcement activities and avoid
conflicts like this. The outcome of this conflict and the subsequent negoti-
ations was the Fulton­Rodgers understanding of 1959,2 with which the two
governments agreed to construct a channel of communication regarding
antitrust matters, through notification and consultation.3
Furthermore, in 1967, the OECD adopted its first recommendation4
encouraging ...