The Hungarian Competition Authority (Gazdasági Versenyhivatal – GVH) is a state administrative authority, which is independent of the Government and reports only to Parliament. The GVH is headed by the President, whose work is assisted by two Vice-Presidents and the Secretary General. One of the Vice Presidents is the Chair of the Competition Council, while the other Vice-President directs and supervises the investigative sections. The investigative sections are supervised by a Vice-President and organised by case types. This includes the following Sections: Antitrust, Cartel, Consumer Protection and Merger. These Sections commence investigations and collect information that is needed for the Competition Council to arrive at a decision. The work of the investigative sections is supported by other Sections. The Competition Policy and Market Research Section deals with economical, theoretical and methodological issues. The Legal Section provides legal support. The Customer Relations Section, under the direction of the Vice-President, is responsible for registering, handling and processing the increased number of consumer complaints in recent years, as well as certain tasks related to the complaints procedure.
The resolutions on the substance of the cases and on the enforcement of the resolutions of the GVH are issued and published by the Competition Council. Furthermore, it assesses the legal remedies submitted against the injunctions made by the investigator in the course of the proceedings. The work of the Competition Council is assisted by the Decision-Making Support Section, and the GVH is represented in court by the colleagues/lawyer colleagues of the Litigation Section in the event of legal appeals against its decisions.
Tasks relating to international cooperation, including EU law enforcement and liaison, are carried out by the Presidential Cabinet. The Authority’s communication tasks are carried out by the Public Service Communications Section, under the direction of the President, and it also contributes to the implementation of competition monitoring and advocacy and competition culture development tasks, as appropriate. Other departments under the President, such as the Section for Human Resources and Coordination, the Section for IT and Document Management and the Cartel Detection Section are responsible for the day-to-day running of the GVH.
The Hungarian Competition Authority as a national competition authority of the EU Member States, not only enforces national laws, but also supervises EU competition rules nationwide. The GVH is one of the few public authorities in Hungary that directly apply the competition provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). In applying the competition rules of the TFEU, the members of the European Competition Network (ECN) work closely together to ensure the effectiveness and consistency of enforcement. In addition to the above-mentioned tasks, the GVH is actively involved in the working groups of European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition on antitrust, mergers and dominant position cases, among others, which fall within its remit. The GVH plays an important professional liaison role between Hungarian and EU competition policy.
The European Competition Day is a high profile, international competition law conference, traditionally organised every six months by the national competition authority of the Member State in charge of the Presidency of the Council of the EU. In the second half of 2024, the Hungarian Competition Authority will be the organiser.
The GVH, which is in the fourth decade of operation, gladly performs this task that has been assigned to it.