The Welcome remarks and presentation of OECD Competition Trends Insights 2021 will be given by António Gomes, Deputy Director, Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, OECD. It will be followed by the Panel I on Environmental Sustainability and Competition. This session will discuss the interaction between competition and sustainability, with a focus on climate change. It will explore how competition authorities can integrate environmental considerations in their competitive assessment, looking at whether the existing tools are well suited to analyse anticompetitive harm and efficiency gains which also have an environmental impact in concrete cases.

This session will discuss the competition dynamics of digital ecosystems. Panelists will explore the economics of ecosystems and the role that ecosystems play today in digital markets. The discussion will highlight how competition in the digital economy is increasingly a competition between ecosystems; how competition between ecosystems may differ from competition between traditional firms; the reasons why some ecosystems succeed while some fail; and the consequences for the enforcement of competition law.

A Keynote Address on the role of competition and regulation in the economic recovery will be given by Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at the University College London (UCL). The Keynote Address will be followed by a Q&A session with Mariana Mazzucato moderated by Ruben Maximiano, Senior Competition Expert (OECD). The Keynote Panel on Competition Policy in the Economic Recovery will follow. This session will discuss the role that competition authorities can play to help a faster and sustained recovery in months and years to come. Competition authorities’ unique skill-set and mandate can help ensure markets are well-functioning and act as engines for the economic recovery. It will discuss how can they best prepare and contribute effectively to the recovery, what will it mean in terms of prioritisation of actions and what types of cases can be expected and in which sectors.

This session will discuss what we have learned about killer acquisitions and what needs to change as a result of past under-enforcement against the acquisition of start-ups by dominant incumbents. It will explore the responses from different agencies and legislators, and consider whether they go in the right direction, and if so, whether they go far enough. It will be followed by the Concluding Remarks which will be given by Antonio Capobianco, Acting Head of the OECD Competition Division.