On 28 – 29 May 2009 Competition Council of Latvia hosted the Sixth Annual Regional/Baltic Competition Conference, devoted to ex-post evaluation of competition policy enforcement. This event has brought together participants from competition authorities of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and Sweden. Conference was organized within the framework of the Twining Light project "Further economic research and analysis capacity strengthening of the Competition Council" between Competition Council of Latvia and Germany.
First day of the conference was divided into two sessions on how to weight results of national competition policy and competition authority and on application of economic analysis methods in competition case investigation. Speakers of these sessions provided a comprehensive insight in such issues as long term evaluation of competition policy from a political perspective (by Mr. Andreas Wolf, the former Director of the Competition Authority of the State of Brandenburg, German Project Leader), impact of competition policy on the national economy (by Mr. Kai Hüschelrath, Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany) and economic analysis in competition enforcement (by Mr. Christian Ewald, Head of Unit G 3, Chief Economist, German Federal Cartel Office).
The second day of the conference was provided in 3 working groups, where all participants had opportunity to exchange information and practical experience on economic analysis in antitrust cases, methodology issues in market studies and the recent actualities in competition law enforcement (parallel application, leniency, commitment etc.). Besides the above mentioned discussions participants agreed on need for closer cooperation on market studies between the Baltic States. This is particularly important due to the small and closely connected markets with the same market participants.
Annual Regional/Baltic Competition Conferences are provided on regular basis, where experts from competition authorities of the Baltic states as well as guests from other countries share their experiences on different competition enforcement and policy issues.