International Competition Network (ICN) steering group members have approved the international Framework on competition agency procedures (CAP) to promote fair and effective agency process.

Basic fairness principles

The CAP is an “opt-in” framework, open to all competition agencies, aimed as an implementation tool to advance basic fairness principles among all competition authorities. While the CAP is inspired by ICN members and is supported by its resources, its implementation structure allows for additional cooperation among participants and is open to competition agencies that are not ICN members as well. ICN chair Andreas Mundt said, “The creation of the CAP, bringing together prior consensus principles and new implementation tools, illustrates the close collaboration within the international competition community and the level of support, confidence and trust placed in the ICN.” The ICN has long recognized the importance of fair and effective procedures and has become a leading international voice on competition agency process. Its 2003 and 2004 Recommended Practices for transparency and procedural fairness during merger review were the first international consensus principles on the topic. In 2015, the ICN approved its agency Guidance on Investigative Process. In 2018, three additional, procedural fairness related work products followed, and at the 2019 ICN annual conference, the ICN will present its highest-level work product on the topic of recommended practices for investigative process.

Broad consensus

The CAP distills basic principles on procedural fairness, which reflect a broad consensus among competition agencies. The CAP adds a cooperation process whereby participating agencies can engage in dialogues to better understand each other’s processes. The framework also includes important transparency provisions allowing participants to publish their procedural rules. The CAP also borrows its “opt-in framework” concept from prior ICN frameworks that promote enforcement cooperation in cartels and mergers. This extends similar, additional cooperation assurances among participating competition agencies to sound agency process principles. Starting point was the MFP project brought forward by the US department of justice. The framework can be found here.