Budapest, 14 May 2024 The tools for effective action against public procurement cartels and cooperation with public procurement authorities will be the focus of a seminar at the joint training centre of the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Budapest, starting today. The three-day international training event brought together 34 competition and public procurement experts from 16 countries to the Hungarian capital.

The Regional Centre for Competition (RCC), jointly run by the GVH and the OECD, is holding a three-day seminar in Budapest, Hungary, between 14 and 16 May 2024. This is the fourth international seminar of the RCC in 2024.

The event will bring together experts from 16 countries, mainly from competition authorities in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The training, entitled “Tackling Bid Rigging in Public Procurement”, focuses on the functioning of public procurement cartels as forms of collusion, the elements of effective investigations and the main tools that competition authorities can use to fight these highly harmful anti-competitive agreements. The training will also guide participants through effective ways of working with public procurement bodies and authorities. The seminar will also give participants a deeper insight into the experience of other competition authorities through several practical examples.

The Centre, run by the GVH and the OECD, was established on 16 February 2005 with the primary objective of providing support in the field of competition law and policy to competition authorities in Eastern, South-Eastern, and Central European countries by organising training courses and other professional programmes in competition law and policy, building on the professional background of the two institutions. There are three similar training centres in the world, one in Budapest, one in Peru and one in the Republic of Korea. As one of only three regional centres of the OECD, the GVH RCC is a key coordinator of professional knowledge sharing in the region.

The RCC’s professional seminars cover a wide range of competition-related issues, providing participants with a broader understanding of competition policy and economic practices, as well as European Commission case law. The Centre traditionally organises several seminars each year for professionals from the so-called beneficiary countries receiving training, both in Hungary and abroad. In mid-April, the OECD-GVH RCC held a seminar on competition law in the capital of Moldova, organised jointly with the Moldovan competition authority, while in March, the heads of competition authorities from 15 countries met in Budapest at the GVH headquarters to discuss common challenges they face in their daily practice.

The next training session of this year’s regional training programme of the GVH and the OECD will take place in Montenegro between 24 and 26 September 2024 on the topic of effective antitrust investigations.

More information on the activities of the training centre is available on the websites of the GVH and the Regional Centre for Competition.

GVH Public Service Communications Section

Further information:

Bálint Horváth, Head of Communication +36 20 238 6939

Katalin Gondolovics, Spokesperson +36 30 603 1170

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