Building Landmarks, Smoothing Out Markets: An Enhanced Competition Framework in Romania

Romania identified competition as key to its effective economic development and is positioning its Competition Council to become more visible and effective. Improving Romania s competitive environment will attract new firms, weed out inefficient ones, and enhance growth potential. An effective competition policy leads to success in the areas of Romania s domestic market efficiency, economic growth, and European market integration. Following a comprehensive functional review of the Romanian Competition Council (RCC) by the World Bank in 2010, weaknesses, needs, and priorities were identified. Building Landmarks, Smoothing Out Markets: An Enhanced Competition Framework in Romania presents the results of the World Bank s Advisory Services review, which were designed to provide solutions in the identified reform areas during 2012 2015. The Advisory Services provided an innovative delivery model that involved integrated expertise to accomplish the following: 1. Review the legal and regulatory framework for competition 2. Offer advocacy support to streamline competition policy principles with other governmental policies and strengthen intergovernmental relations, especially with sectoral regulators (electricity and telecommunications) and the prosecutor s office 3. Provide state-of-the-art capacity building to strengthen the RCC staff s technical knowledge 4. Optimize internal procedures to improve institutional functioning using Enterprise Architecture methodology, which provides an in-depth assessment and development of a target business and information technology architecture. The RCC has started to apply some of the upgraded regulatory instruments, combined with the analytical skills in antitrust law and economics acquired with the support of the World Bank, in recent antitrust cases and in market inquiries to identify competition constraints in sectors that have great importance for consumers and infrastructure projects with state aid elements.
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