On November 3, Business and Economic Centre hosted the working group meeting which discussed the draft law on “Free Trade and Competition” initiated by the Government of Georgia. The round table was attended by the deputy chairman of the parliament of Georgia, MPs from the committee on sector economy and economic policy and committees’ staff members; also international and local NGOs, business associations and experts.
Aim of the meeting was to discuss the draft law, to share the comments and recommendations with the members of parliament about the pending legislative changes. The detailed presentation was delivered by Ketevan Lapachi, representative of the International Black Sea University.
At the beginning of the presentation, representative of the Delegation of the European Union to Georgia expressed the EU position on this draft document: she admitted that this draft was a step forward if we compare it with the existing law on competition. But still this document requires some amendments before adoption and implementation. Georgia is not the candidate country yet. So, it is not necessary fully harmonization of Georgian legislation with the EU legislation, but it requires the coincidence on the level of general principles.
Ketevan Lapachi’s presentation started with the explanation of the basic principles of competition policy, general overview of the Georgian legislation on competition and then participants discussed the draft law on free trade and competition. As a result of this round table, experts have comments on different articles, especially on the following issues:
- The field of the regulation of the law;
- Aim of the law;
- Definition of the terms;
- About the restriction on competition agreements;
- Enforcement and appeal mechanisms;
Experts also expressed their general comments about the draft, that the language and the structure of the document needs improvement, some articles require amendments and some of them should be removed from the draft to avoid future problems in the process of implementation to businesses and competition agency itself.
The meeting was very dynamic, in discussion process were involved not only experts, but MPs and committees’ staff. At the end, participants decided before the second committee hearing of the draft law, organizations will send their comments and recommendations to the relevant committees with the help of Business and Economic Centre.
