CAN country rules of competition to be harmonized
with European Union assistance

Lima, March 3, 2003. The Andean Community Secretariat and the European Community today presented the Competition Project that will make it possible, over the next three years, to improve and harmonize Bolivian, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Venezuelan legislation on competition and support the institutions responsible for its control and application.

The Head of the European Commission Delegation to Peru, Ambassador Mendel Goldstein, and the Andean Community (CAN) Director General, Héctor Maldonado, were responsible for its presentation.

Representatives of the project beneficiaries were present at the ceremony: the CAN General Secretariat, the Andean Court of Justice, and institutions responsible for competition, such as Peru’s Indecopi, Venezuela’s Procompetencia, Colombia’s Office of the Superintendent of Industry and Trade, Bolivia’s National Bureau of Domestic Trade, and Ecuador’s Foreign Trade Policy Bureau.

The aim of the project is to improve the region’s legislative, administrative and judicial context for competition law, support the Andean institutions responsible for the application and control of provisions on the subject, and promote a culture of competition.

A number of activities will be carried out to attain these objectives, with the participation of European and Andean experts: subregional and national seminars; juridical consultancies and sectorial studies; the training of officials and magistrates responsible for the application and control of competition regulations; and in-service training, among other things.

Financing for the three-year project will come from the European Commission, which will provide two million euros, and the beneficiaries, which will allocate a total of 1.5 million euros for that purpose.

Héctor Maldonado underscored the importance of having rules of competition to ensure the free play of market forces and boost economic efficiency and, above all, reinforce the economic integration of the CAN countries. “For that reason, we believe that the project will help us to move ahead firmly toward our target of establishing the Andean Common Market in 2005," he stressed.

Ambassador Mendel Goldstein, for his part, asserted that "the Competition project is among the European Union’s Cooperation priorities, which include support for the Andean Community’s institutional efforts in this area.”

The presentation was made during the First Seminar on Subregional Reflection on the state of competition, which will end on Wednesday, March 5, and be followed, on March 6, by the First Meeting of the Project Follow-up Committee.