In order to share the European experience in implementing competition law, a group of experts from the Latvian Competition Authority were in a working visit at the Competition Council of Republic of Moldova, on January 14-16, 2015.   

During the seminar, the Competition Council staff was acquainted with some important subjects for the implementation of the Competition Law, related to the assessment of mergers, the estimation of damage in horizontal and vertical agreements, and investigating cases of abuse of dominant position.

Among the topics of major importance we can mention the seminars on the "Theoretical and practical aspects concerning the evaluation procedure and the acceptance of proposed commitments, both in the case of anticompetitive practices, as well as in the case of economic concentrations", "Food retail market (supermarket) – barriers to entry on the market for domestic producers, small and medium enterprises” and "Mergers in banking and insurance markets".

Also, the Latvian colleagues have shared their experience on conducting inspections, bid rigging detection methods, estimating the damage in horizontal and vertical agreements, and determining the relevant markets in the case of mergers.

The importance of this seminar consists in the fact that the acceptance of proposed commitments represents a new tool for the Competition Council, provided by the Competition Law No.183 of 11 July 2012, which will be implemented starting from 1 January 2015, both when investigating anticompetitive practices as well as when  authorizing mergers.