The Georgian Competition and Consumer Agency organised a round table with national regulatory bodies to develop competition policy in Georgia, increase legal enforcement, and discuss international best practices.
The event was opened by Irakli Lekvinadze, Chairman of the Competition and Consumer Agency; Natia Turnava, First Vice-President and Acting President of the National Bank of Georgia; Davit Narmania, Chairman of GNERC; Davit Onoprishvili, the head of the State Insurance Supervision Service of Georgia, and Ekaterine Imadedze, Commissioner of the Communications Commission.
"According to the amendments adopted in the Law of Georgia on Competition, in 2020, a single legal framework was developed to separate the jurisdiction of the National Competition Agency from its fellow regulatory bodies. As a result, Authorities apply consistent principles to the most important aspects of competition law. One of the key directions of the amendments in the law was the management of the unified principles of issue and solution control in collaboration with other economic regulatory authorities, which I believe has been handled pretty effectively in the past. In this short period, we reviewed a number of important cases and created the groundwork for several significant projects for our country, both locally and internationally. At today's event, we will review legal enforcement issues related to competition policy with European experts in order to share international best practices. Irakli Lekvinadze thanked the regulatory authorities for their participation, active involvement, and the EU-funded TWINNING project for their support.
Irakli Shakiashvili, Deputy Head of Legal Department of the GCCA; Medeina Augustinavičienė, Deputy Chairwoman and Council Member of the Competition Council of the Republic of Lithuania and Nora Schindler, Case handler of the Austrian Federal Competition Authority provided reports on competition policy enforcement mechanisms in regulated sectors at the local and international levels.
The meeting was held in a question-and-answer format, with participants discussing current trends, challenges, opportunities, and results in the energy, communications, postal, and banking sectors, all of which are strategically important issues for regulatory bodies, using Austria and Lithuania as examples.
The round table, which included national regulatory bodies, was organized with the cooperation of the EU-funded TWINNING project.
