Andrej Matvoz presented Slovenian practice in the field of cartel agreements in Vienna

The 16th biennial International Cartel Workshop on the Investigation of Major International Cartels (International Cartel Workshop) has begun in Vienna today, and will last until Friday. Among the approximately 250 leading experts in this field in the world, Andrej Matvoz, Director of Slovenian Competition Protection Agency (SCPA), is also participating. The workshop is being prepared by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the International Bar Association (IBA), and in the past almost three decades, Tokyo, London, Vancouver, Paris, New York and Rome have also hosted it.
SCPA Director, Andrej Matvoz, highlighted the issues of cartel agreements in public procurement, digital data extraction and hiding due to new encrypted systems - these are security systems that convert data into an unreadable form using mathematical algorithms and keys. He spoke to the audience about the importance of regulators being independent from both politics and capital, and presented the SCPA’s enforcement priorities and strategic direction for this year. He explained which sectors are currently under the scrutiny of the Slovenian Competition Ombudsman, and how SCPA coordinates and exchanges information with the European Commission and the European Competition Network (ECN). He also outlined how SCPA is working to raise awareness among market participants about antitrust rules on information exchange. Matvoz also shared with the audience SCPA’s practical experience with coordinated investigations and, more broadly, cooperation with other competition authorities, and presented the impact of the tools introduced by the ECN+ Directive on cross-border enforcement and the practical challenges in this regard, including differences in legal secrecy rules and data protection requirements.
In addition to Andrej Matvoz, the round table was attended by Lucilia Falsarella Pereira, Senior Director for Competition Enforcement at the UK Competition and Markets Authority, and Natalie Harsdorf, Director General for Competition at the Austrian Federal Competition Authority. The round table was moderated by Anna Wolf-Posch from the Austrian law firm Cerha Hempel, which cooperates with the law firm Ulčar & partners in Slovenia.