CADE organizes workshop about International Cooperation

From 14 to 16 October 2015, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense – CADE organized the third edition of the Workshop on Competition Enforcement and International Cooperation. The international exchange is held once a year in partnership with the General Direction for Competition of the European Union, through the European Union-Brazil Sector Dialogues Project.

The event gathered 10 representatives from national authorities of Member States of the European Union (Slovenia, United Kingdom, Italy, Austria, Spain, Denmark, Portugal, Croatia and Latvia) and from the European Commission, as well as invitees from the US Federal Trade Commission and from COFECE Mexico, in order to discuss the main challenges of competition law application and of antitrust international cooperation.

Several panels were held on the three days of the workshop. Among the debated themes were the 50 years of CADE and the protection of competition defense in Brazil; investigation techniques, priorities and strategies of the authority; challenges on international cooperation on the fight against cartels and on leniency programs; and the Brazilian experience on merger and acquisition cases that required exchange of information with foreign authorities.

Furthermore, there were also panels on antitrust remedies and international perspectives for compliance programs, besides a wide discussion about the international scenery involving cooperation between antitrust authorities on the evaluation of merger cases.

For CADE’s president, Vinicius Marques de Carvalho, the initiative represents not only the exchange of knowledge in mutual interest, but also an excellent opportunity to the exchange of understanding and experience in subjects connected to competition defense.

“To CADE, the international cooperation is an essential instrument to promote, effectively, competition in Brazil. This exchange of information with the actors of the sector in other jurisdictions, bilateral or multilateral, is a milestone to the promotion of competition defense. Global challenges must have global answers”, said Carvalho.
According to him, the workshop can also encourage the consolidation of strategic partnerships and strengthen work relations with antitrust authorities from the European Union and other participant countries.