OREANDA-NEWS. April 10, 2014. “It took around seven years of efforts so businesses started employing experts on competition law, and everybody understands how important this field is”, said the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), Igor Artemiev, at the research-to-practice conference on “Developing Competition Law: the Existing Needs and Problems of Legal Regulation”.

“The essence of our work in the recent years was to develop and “digest” the legislative norms adopted earlier. We secured amendments to the Code on Administrative Violations, to the Criminal Code and the antimonopoly law, there are judicial precedents that changed production relations in entire industries”, emphasized Igor Artemiev.

Discussing today’s areas of FAS work, the Head of the antimonopoly authority pointed out: “Now we shall focus on two directions: on the one hand, the “forth antimonopoly package” liberalizes the law and FAS is being transformed from a punitive body into a preventative one, expanding the system of warnings and admonitions. On the other, such soft measures shall not be applied to cartel participants”.

The Head of the Antimonopoly Service also stressed that FAS will be assigned the powers to regulate formation of state and municipal unitary enterprises in accord with the Road Map for “Developing Competition and Improving the Antimonopoly Law”. “The President, the Government and the State Duma endorse the view that the state sector of the economy, not founded on entrepreneurial incentives, is too big in Russia, while small and medium businesses are unable to enter a lot of branches, such as housing & utilities and transport”.

He added that “FAS will not permit formation of new state and municipal unitary enterprises on competitive markets; it can be allowed only as a last resort in defence industry, nuclear power industry, etc.”

In conclusion, Igor Artemiev asked for support of academic community in developing the state educational standard on “competition law”, specializations - “legal studies” or “economics”.