The World Bank's Integrity Vice-Presidency (INT) investigates misconduct in Bank-funded projects and advises World Bank staff and borrowing country personnel on corruption prevention measures. When INT finds misconduct in a World Bank-funded project, the Bank can bar the firms or individuals involved from bidding on future World Bank-financed contracts. It can also provide information to national law enforcement authorities in the country or countries where the misconduct occurred or where the companies or individuals reside for possible criminal prosecution. Its preventive unit distills investigative findings into thematic reports like this and other documents that it shares with World Bank staff and borrowing country personnel to help them reduce misconduct in future projects. One of the challenges in preventing fraud, corruption, and collusion in the roads sector is that there are so many ways they can seep into the process of designing, tendering, and managing construction contracts (Patterson and Chaudhuri 2007). The 2006 project appraisal document for the Paraguay Road Maintenance Project identified 36 areas at risk of corruption in the design, planning, award, and management of a roads contract and recommended monitoring 59 different indicators (World Bank 2006b, 146-154). While in an ideal world borrowing country personnel overseeing roads projects will watch everything everywhere always, time and other resources are limited. The aim of this report is to help policymakers prioritize oversight resources by identifying recurring forms of misconduct in roads projects that cause significant harm and suggesting measures to reduce or eliminate them.

Curbing fraud, corruption, and collusion in the roads sector

Leniency Programmes have been introduced as a complementary measure in the enforcement of competition law in detecting cartels, on the basis that hard to find evidence will be provided by undertakings coming forward to confess, in exchange for immunity or reduction in fines. The advantages of leniency are deemed to be twofold, since evidence is thereby expected to be given voluntarily, and in turn it would save up the limited resources available to enforcement authorities, by reducing lengthy investigations in search of evidence. Therefore, the widely accepted view by regulators, economists, and lawyers alike is that leniency is by far the most effective method of detecting and deterring anticompetitive activities by undertakings. An ‘undertaking’ covers any entity engaged in an economic activity that offers goods or services in a given market. In the UK, Chapter I of the Competition Act 1998 governs prohibitions that fall within the category of cartels of which price-fixing, market or customer sharing, agreements to restrict production or supply, and bid-rigging are the most serious ‘hard-core cartels’. This study evaluates the efficacy of the Leniency Programme in the enforcement of competition law applied in respect of cartel infringements based on cases decided by the UK’s principal enforcement authority. Chapter I cases decided and published over a twelve-year period, since the Competition Act 1998 came into force, have been analysed in order to evaluate whether the leniency programme has been an incentive for colluders to apply for leniency. The results indicate that very few leniency applications were submitted voluntarily before an investigation was begun by the enforcement authority. Moreover, the detection rate of Chapter I cases on average has been very low over the twelveyear period, less than 2 cases per year, excluding settlements. The research also shows that contrary to the accepted view that evidence relating to cartels is difficult to find, cartels studied in this thesis have left a trail of both electronic, and other evidence that the authorities were able to seize. Further, the leniency applicants were not always reliable witnesses, and despite leniency, the enforcement authorities had to conduct lengthy investigations, negating the cost saving assertion and taking resources away from ex officio interventions by the authorities. The conclusion drawn from this study is that rather than enhancing detection and deterrence of anticompetitive behaviour by undertakings, the leniency programme overlaps, and in effect, undermines the public enforcement of competition law in the UK.

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The role of the leniency programme in the enforcement of competition law in the UK: a complementary enforcement procedure or an admission of the failure of enforcement authorities to tackle anticompetitive behaviour head on?

The next years should bring about a rapid transformation of the electricity sector towards high levels of renewable generation and increasing numbers of electric vehicles. Smart grids are seen as the silver bullet responding to the challenge of integrating renewables, managing flexibility, and keeping the costs down in distribution networks. Network unbundling on the other hand is essential for competition in the liberalized electricity industry. It forces independence of the networks and thereby eliminates concern that incumbent integrated (network) firms discriminate against new entrants. With smart grids the unbundling questions become relevant for distribution networks, because active control in smart grids entails discrimination potentials. However, smart grids exhibit coordination needs for efficient system operation and unbundling eliminates firm-internal coordination. Accounting for both aspects, this paper proposes an independent system operator to govern smart distribution grids. It eliminates discrimination incentives and serves coordination needs, thereby striking a balance between both competition and efficiency goals.

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Governing smart grids: the case for an independent system operator

We investigate the relationship between public and private enforcers introducing a more differentiated approach In contrast to the existing literature, we take into account that the costs and benefits of detection and prosecution and, thus, the usefulness of each enforcement mode may change with a variation of the type of anticompetitive conduct We define a set of parameters that determine the costs and benefits of both types to enforce the antitrust laws and discuss implications for European competition law and policy

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Public and Private Enforcement of Competition Law - A Differentiated Approach

Balancing economic freedom against social policy principles: EC competition law and national health systems

The Simmons & Simmons EU, Competition & Regulatory Group welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Commission’s white paper. Our international practice group is rooted in both common law and civil code traditions and the input from our various offices reflect concerns arising from individual legal traditions, as well as more fundamental reservations. Our response seeks to reflect the diversity of views across our Group.

White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules

The interaction of competition, consumer and data protection laws: a few comments inspired by the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union

Paolisa Nebbia

Papers

White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules

The interaction of competition, consumer and data protection laws: a few comments inspired by the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union