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GCR Rating Enforcement 2022: AFCA again among top enforcers globally

Every year Global Competition Review (GCR) publishes a ranking of the world’s top competition authorities. The Austrian Federal Competition Authority (AFCA) was again awarded good ratings in this year’s report.

Alongside the Austrian authority, competition authorities in Canada, Chile, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain and Turkey were also rated as “good”. The AFCA was found to do outstanding work of consistently high quality despite facing constraints due to low financial and personnel resources.

Lawyers lauded the AFCA for its enforcement work but also for the way it uses its influence and advocacy tools to promote competition as well as its own institutional independence. The Authority was also awarded more than 4.5 out of 5 stars in the field of independence and ambition, as well as being attributed the status of “improving”.

 

High number of merger notifications

The AFCA received 653 merger notifications in 2021, the highest number ever since 2005, when this kind of statistic was first recorded. In comparison, only the German Bundeskartellamt and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) have had to handle more notifications, albeit with 170 and 428 staff respectively (the AFCA has 51). The most successful outcomes of AFCA’s work in 2021: fines amounting to a total of EUR 45.7 million, 21 dawn raids, 8 applications under the leniency programme, 78 whistleblower reports.

Global Competition Review (GCR) is an internationally renowned source of information on competition policy and antitrust enforcement. Its rankings are based on investigation proceedings and decisions related to the prosecution of antitrust breaches and market abuse as well as efforts in merger control. Further criteria used for the rankings are financial and personnel resources. Additionally, experts are asked to evaluate national enforcers’ performance from a practical perspective.