COMMISSION FOR THE PROTECTION OF COMPETITION

The Commission for the Protection of Competition of the Republic of Cyprus participates in the project “Computational Antitrust” hosted by the CodeX Center of Stanford University and run by Prof. Thibault Schrepel. This program was launched in 2021 with the aim of introducing new tools and methods that will succeed in pairing the protection of competition with digital techniques and it involves 65 other national competition authorities and academics with different backgrounds.

The “Computational Antitrust” project focuses on the digital world and on the concerns of all interested bodies in dealing with protection of competition in an updated manner, different from traditional applications as its purpose is to explore how legal informatics could foster the mechanization of antitrust analysis and procedures in the context of competition law. Thus, this project introduces new and modern computational methods enabling the national competition authorities to maintain and improve their competencies in relation to detection, analysis and dealing with anticompetitive practices and behaviors in the digital sector. At the same time, these techniques can be used by the undertakings themselves, in order to pre-assess and ensure their compliance with the protection of competition laws. The new techniques and tools can also help with the simplification and automatization of the interactions between companies and national competition authorities, starting with merger control.

The Commission for the Protection of Competition welcomes this program and considers that it will offer new possibilities for competition law that will make it more effective in modern digital markets and technologies.

Information about this program can be found at the following link:
https://law.stanford.edu/codex-the-stanford-center-for-legal-informatics/computational-antitrust/