What Can Make Competition Compliance Programmes Really Effective?

This article draws the business community’s and competition agencies’ attention to selected topics that would benefit from more attention when considering effective competition law compliance programmes. It draws on recent discussions in the OECD Competition Committee and the related background paper on Competition Compliance Programmes, however, the views expressed reflect solely the opinion of the authors. We identify five major compliance topics – detection and prompt reporting, senior management involvement, monitoring and auditing, compliance incentives, and third-party compliance – and suggest possible courses of action to enhance compliance programmes’ effectiveness.

By Sabine Zigelski & Lynn Robertson^[1]

I. INTRODUCTION

There is widespread unanimity about what should constitute the main elements of a competition compliance programme. The criteria established by recent United States DOJ guidance^[2] can serve as a good starting point since many other agency guidelines use similar criteria. Rather than focussing on those widely known and accepted elements, we will focus on a select few that we believe are particularly relevant for the effectiveness of compliance policies: detection and prompt reporting; senior management involvement; monitoring and auditing; compliance incentives; and third-party compliance. We assert that these elements, in particular, could merit more attention by competition agencies wanting to promote compliance more effec