• OECD-BID – Derecho y Política de la Competencia en Argentina. Examen inter-pares. Paris, 2006, pg. 38.

“Entre los miembros influyentes de este sector privado se incluyen los funcionarios de la CNDC. Uno de ellos inició un grupo de discusión llamado ForoCompetencia, cuyos miembros provienen de toda Latinoamérica y otros países.46 El sitio en cuestión es un lugar en el cual se desarrollan discusiones activas sobre los temas de políticas de defensa de la competencia que afectan a la región. Localmente en Buenos Aires, un grupo de expertos en política de defensa de la competencia de sectores privados y públicos se reúnen informalmente de manera periódica a fin de discutir los desarrollos actuales en la materia. Estos expertos publican artículos y comentarios sobre las políticas de defensa de la competencia en revistas locales.”

 

• Sokol, Daniel – “The development of human capital in Latin American competition policy” en Fox, Eleanor y Sokol, Daniel (eds.) - Competition Law and Policy in Latin America. Hart Publishing. Oxford, 2009, pg.27.

“A rather unique private sector organization that promotes norm diffusion of competition policy is the ForoCompetencia. ForoCompetencia is a virtual competition organization that has a listserve for competition policy specialists in government, private practice and academia in the region. The listserve and its sister announcement listserve generate lively traffic when people post items regarding particular questions. Perhaps the most important development of the listserve has been the ability of practitioners across jurisdictions to compare experiences as well as application of competition law and economics in their jurisdictions. Furthermore, ForoCompetencia is not entirely virtual; it holds biennial conferences in Argentina, during which participants from six to eight jurisdictions across Latin America make presentations.”

 

• Peña, Julián – “Promoting competition policies from the private sector in Latin America” en Fox, Eleanor y Sokol, Daniel (eds.) – Competition Law and Policy in Latin America. Hart Publishing. Oxford, 2009, pg. 477.

“ForoCompetencia is a discussion group that was created in October 2001 for the purpose of analyzing different competition regulation issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. It is also now a network of more than 400 lawyers and economists from over 25 different countries, mainly from Latin America and Europe. The members of ForoCompetencia include competition and regulation specialists from the public, private and academic sectors of Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Holland, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela, among others.

ForoCompetencia is a virtual network. It sponsors debates held electronically through an e-mail listserve. Topics are proposed on a monthly basis by different members of ForoCompetencia. The debates last an average of one week. To date, ForoCompetencia has held over 50 debates, which have covered an important variety of topics such as general economic interest, the exploitative abuse of dominant positions, the relationship between anti-dumping and competition, competition and intellectual property, the effects of the informal economy on the definition of a relevant market, the failing firm defense in developing countries, institutional structures and the role of efficiencies in antitrust analysis.

ForoCompetencia has also developed an information-sharing network on competition issues named PC-News, and also publishes a yearbook containing all of the group’s activities and debates. It also organizes bi-annual colloquia. The first event was held in 2003, with 70 participants from seven countries. The second colloquium was held in 2005, with nearly 100 participants from six countries. At the third colloquium, held in 2007, members from 10 different countries participated.

In June 2005, ForoCompetencia launched its website (www.forocompetencia.com) with the aim of promoting its activities, providing its members with access to previous debates and publishing news regarding future activities. ForoCompetencia has been a truly interdisciplinary experience. In its debates, professionals from different countries and from different backgrounds give their perspectives on a wide variety of competition-related topics. These debates, which are later compiled in the yearbooks, have become a reference source for competition law in Latin America, since the debates reflect the economic, legal and political peculiarities of the region. Locally, ForoCompetencia has held over 80 breakfast debates in Argentina, attracting the attendance of members from the competition agency, the judiciary, and private lawyers and economists. In these monthly meetings, both issues and cases have been discussed in open-minded interdisciplinary debates.”

 

• Botta, Marco – Merger control regimes in emerging economies. A case study on Brazil and Argentina. Wolters Kluwer. Holanda, 2011, pg.102.

“Besides the limited number of events organized by the CNDC, there are two main fora for the discussion of competition law topics in Argentina. One is ForoCompetencia, a virtual discussion forum concerning the recent development of Argentinian competition law. The latter is a Yahoo Group whose membership is constituted by the majority of economists and lawyers working in the field of competition law in Argentina, both in the public and private sector. Besides being a ‘virtual’ forum for discussion, ForoCompetencia organizes a monthly breakfast in Buenos Aires. During the breakfast, a recent competition law development is presented and debated. The events are attended by the lawyers practising competition law in Buenos Aires, and by some of the CNDC Commissioners as well. The benefit of these meetings is that they attempt to involve competition law experts working in both the public and private sector. However, the competition advocacy role of these foravis-a-vis the public at large in the country is very limited. The public remains excluded from such events, which only concern the experts in the field. The consequence of these limited efforts of competition advocacy is that the lack of competition culture remains a major issue in Argentina, which is not expected to be resolved in the near future.”