Legal and Practical Aspects of Cartel Detection and Prevent

The work deals with the practical aspects of cartels, both the legal regulation of actions restricting competition and their detection and prevention. Emphasis is placed on the role and importance of competition law in assessing the total economic damage caused by the disregard of competition law by economic agents in the relevant markets and the concerted actions of cartels. The discussion for horizontal (agreement/concerted action between competing economic agents operating in the same product market) and vertical (agreement/concerted action between non-competing economic agents operating in different product markets) cartels is carried out. It is also mentioned that the agreement between the competing economic agents, on the one hand, can reduce, eliminate, or strengthen the competition. However, on the other hand, individual agreements can increase the effectiveness of competition. As for vertical agreements, such an anti-competitive act may occur when a dominant producer/service economic agent offers products/services under preferential conditions to a participating seller/service-receiving economic agent, while discriminating against other economic agents. However, it is also a fact that such an action creates a risk of restriction of competition only if the parties to the agreement (separately or taken together) occupy a dominant position and have market power.In the research, an important place is given to international and local legal mechanisms for detecting cartels, and advanced foreign and Georgian practices are presented in this regard. Finally, the conclusion is made that, in order to detect and prevent concerted actions, the provisions included in the competition law in force in Georgia today (detection and prevention of cartels as actions restricting competition) are in full compliance with advanced international practice and, first of all, with similar norms of the EU countries. However, it is also clear that in the background of the development of contemporary digital technologies, when the specifics of the work of many companies are rapidly changing, which diversifies the ways of making concerted commercial strategic decisions - making the issues of detection and detection of concerted actions by competition agencies even more noteworthy. In this direction, the enforcement institutions of the competition of Georgia, as The Agency of Competition and Consumer Protection of Georgia as well as the supervisory bodies of the regulated sector (enforcing the competition legislation in the regulated sector) will have to make more efforts. Keywords: Cartel, Agreement, Terms of Trade, Restriction of Competition, Sanction, Pricing Algorithm, Agency, Regulated Sector, Business Environment