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Washington, DC— At a Council on Foreign Relations press event held earlier this month, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim discussed the importance of shared procedural norms and the rule of law. During his speech, Delrahim highlighted efforts made by the Justice Department and foreign antitrust agencies, in cooperation with the State Department and Federal Trade Commission, to enhance the current international system of competition enforcement. Delrahim ultimately announced the Multilateral Framework on Procedures in Competition Law Investigation and Enforcement, more colloquially termed as the Multilateral Framework on Procedures (MFP) and invited the global antitrust community to join and assist in finalizing the framework.
The MFP strives to establish universal and fundamental procedural norms within antitrust and competition enforcement worldwide. Following Delrahim, an expansion of international and digital commerce and the “proliferation of competition authorities” made competition law increasingly more complex and inspired a need for an agreed upon core set of standards. The goal of MFP is to prioritize due process and procedural fairness and unity as the world becomes more interconnected and more players are in the game.
“We are...committed to bridging the differences between civil and common law countries, between administrative and prosecutorial approaches, and between young and old agencies in small and large markets,” Delrahim commented.
The Multilateral Framework on Procedures is an open invitation to all countries. Delrahim argued it only makes sense for countries to comply with the agreement. Not only will countries that comply be incentivized by an enhanced reputation in the global antitrust community, but such nations will not be unfamiliar with much of the MFP’s content. Specifically, the framework draws upon preexisting and shared values found in the MFP’s three “building blocks”: competition agencies’ existing network of agreements, OECD and the ICN’s procedural principles, and free trade agreement competition chapters. The MFP does however reveal an effort to create more global unity and interaction by promoting due process and international antitrust discourse.
Though recent international events allude to a fracturing world, the Multilateral Framework on Procedures contradicts that trend. By endeavoring to find commonalities between nations in upholding valued principles of due process, the MFP seeks to unify a disintegrating international economic order. While the framework is not a hard-law commitment in the formal sense, Delrahim expects it will “raise the bar on procedural norms” and garner international compliance. As the framework’s finalizing talks continue between nations and antitrust agencies, the world will see whether Delrahim’s words come to fruition.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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A Multilateral Call for Procedural Norms
Scales of Justice background - legal law concept
June 14, 2018
Washington, DC— At a Council on Foreign Relations press event held earlier this month, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim discussed the importance of shared procedural norms and the rule of law. During his speech, Delrahim highlighted efforts made by the Justice Department and foreign antitrust agencies, in cooperation with the State Department and Federal Trade Commission, to enhance the current international system of competition enforcement. Delrahim ultimately announced the Multilateral Framework on Procedures in Competition Law Investigation and Enforcement, more colloquially termed as the Multilateral Framework on Procedures (MFP) and invited the global antitrust community to join and assist in finalizing the framework.
The MFP strives to establish universal and fundamental procedural norms within antitrust and competition enforcement worldwide. Following Delrahim, an expansion of international and digital commerce and the “proliferation of competition authorities” made competition law increasingly more complex and inspired a need for an agreed upon core set of standards. The goal of MFP is to prioritize due process and procedural fairness and unity as the world becomes more interconnected and more players are in the game.
“We are...committed to bridging the differences between civil and common law countries, between administrative and prosecutorial approaches, and between young and old agencies in small and large markets,” Delrahim commented.
The Multilateral Framework on Procedures is an open invitation to all countries. Delrahim argued it only makes sense for countries to comply with the agreement. Not only will countries that comply be incentivized by an enhanced reputation in the global antitrust community, but such nations will not be unfamiliar with much of the MFP’s content. Specifically, the framework draws upon preexisting and shared values found in the MFP’s three “building blocks”: competition agencies’ existing network of agreements, OECD and the ICN’s procedural principles, and free trade agreement competition chapters. The MFP does however reveal an effort to create more global unity and interaction by promoting due process and international antitrust discourse.
Though recent international events allude to a fracturing world, the Multilateral Framework on Procedures contradicts that trend. By endeavoring to find commonalities between nations in upholding valued principles of due process, the MFP seeks to unify a disintegrating international economic order. While the framework is not a hard-law commitment in the formal sense, Delrahim expects it will “raise the bar on procedural norms” and garner international compliance. As the framework’s finalizing talks continue between nations and antitrust agencies, the world will see whether Delrahim’s words come to fruition.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
