On 6th October 2019, the Belgian Competition Authority (the « Authority ») published on its website a guide on the exchange of information in the framework of professional associations. To this day, the guide has been published in Dutch and French versions.
A draft of this guide was subject to a public consultation launched on 12th September 2018 by the Authority. Neither the guide nor the press release indicate how many answers the Authority received in the context of the public consultation. However, some significant changes have been brought to the draft guide published in September 2018.
The guide reminds the key principles of both EU and Belgian competition law on the issue of the exchange of information between competitors.
It also focusses on four specific issues, namely :
- market surveys
- price comparison tools
- market forecasts
- cost and price calculation methods and formulas
This guide should be read and implemented by all professional associations active in Belgium. We can anticipate that with this publication, the Authority wants to put the emphasis on competition law issues in their framework and that enforcement controls would come soon or later.
