Romania - Functional Review : Romania Competition Council

World Bank

Washington, DC

关键词: AGRICULTURE;    ALTERNATIVE POLICY INSTRUMENTS;    ANTI-COMPETITIVE PRACTICES;    ANTITRUST LAWS;    BARRIERS TO ENTRY;   

RP-ID  :  74289

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The European Union is founded on acompetitive market economy unified by commonly agreed rulesand practices. While Romania has joined the Union, itsability to prosper fully within the common market requires astrengthened commitment to, and ability to protect, EUcompetition principles. Romania's legal andorganizational framework for enhancing competition istenuous and the current economic and fiscal crisis putsrecent gains at risk. In particular, Romania'sperformance in competition policy still lags behind EUpractice and is characterized by: (i) State-ownedenterprises and government participation still play adominant role in many important markets and sectors inRomania, controlling at least one firm in 14 key sectors ofthe economy and exhibiting a market share above 50% in atleast one segment of network industries. (ii) Relatively lowenforcement of competition policy against hard-core cartelsand abusive practices while merger review cases that do notsignificantly impose threats to competition account for thebulk of the workload in the competition area. (iii) Lowstaffing for competition enforcement and economic analysisplacing the Romania Competition Council (RCC) at the bottomof European Union rankings with no internal target deadlinesto track performance. (iv) Active advocacy activities mainlyfocus on raising awareness of the importance of competitionlaw but efforts need to be made to refocus activity ontackling anticompetitive regulation, expand advocacy to keygroups within the government and implement alternativeadvocacy tools. A comprehensive reform program therefore isrequired at the national level, as well as within theRomanian Competition Council (RCC) as the key agency inguaranteeing healthy competition. Priority actions, furtherdetailed in this report, include the following: (i) improvethe competitive environment by reducing the dominant role ofthe state in several economic sectors, (ii) provide spacefor a redoubled RCC focus on competition enforcementestablish a new unit within RCC to target hard coreanti-competitive behavior take immediate steps, within theprinciples of the government's unified pay system, toensure a level of compensation to core RCC competition staffcommensurate with their responsibilities in front of thejudiciary and private sector.