What is the ICN
The ICN (International Competition Network) is a network of international competition authorities which facilitates information exchange and sharing in order to promote more efficient protection of competition. Membership is voluntary; any competition authority may become a member. The ICN is the only worldwide international organization dealing with the application of competition law. It is organized into several working groups (e.g. cartels, mergers, unilateral conduct), which are supervised by the Steering Group. Since spring 2009 the Steering Group has been chaired by John Fingleton, Chief Executive of the UK Office of Fair Trading. On the basis of a joint consensus, the output of the work of the individual working groups is published by the ICN in the form of recommendations (e.g. as best practices). It depends on the individual members of the network whether and how they will implement these recommendations. Topical issues are also broadly discussed at the ICN annual conference and workshops. The ICN cooperates closely with other organizations, e.g OECD, WTO, UNCTAD, other associations and academia.
At present the following working groups (some of them divided into subgroups) are active within the ICN:
- Advocacy
- Cartels
- General Legal Framework
- Enforcement Technique
- Competition Advocacy in an Economic Downturn
- Competition Policy Implementation
- The Effectiveness of Technical Assistance
- Agencies Effectiveness Project
- Market Studies Project
- Mergers
- Notification and Procedures
- Merger Investigation and Analysis
- Unilateral Conduct
- Operational Working Groups
- Operational Framework
- Membership
More about the ICN at: http://www.internationalcompetitionnetwork.org/ 
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ICN Merger Workshop 2008
On March 18 and 19, 2008 the ICN Merger Workshop took place at the Congress Centre of the Holiday Inn hotel in Brno. This seminar led by the International Competition Network (ICN) was organized by the Office for the Protection of Competition in co-operation with the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic.
More than 120 representatives of competition authorities or non-governmental competition experts, who cooperate with the competition authorities within the ICN, participated in the workshop. The delegates were from more than 40 states.
The topics of the workshop were: discussion on the setting of notification criteria and discussion on the range of information submitted by the companies to notify a merger, contents and timing of the merger review and also formulation of correct remedies and measures to the benefit of effective competition in case of problematic mergers. The workshop highlighted the necessity of an interactive exchange of information and experience, therefore the greater part of the workshop took place in small breakout groups led by the most experienced ICN experts.
The results of the workshop in Brno were presented at the ICN Annual Conference in Kyoto, Japan, in May 2008.
5/10/2009