The OECD-GVH Regional Centre for Competition in Budapest (Hungary) (RCC) was established by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Gazdasági Versenyhivatal (GVH, Hungarian Competition Authority) on 16th February 2005 when a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the parties.

The main objective of the RCC is to foster the development of competition policy, competition law and competition culture in the East, South-East and Central European region and thereby to contribute to economic growth and prosperity in the region.

The RCC provides capacity building assistance and policy advice through workshops, seminars and training programmes on competition law and policy for officials in competition enforcement agencies and other parts of government, sector regulators, judges and others. The RCC also works to strengthen competition law and policy in Hungary and the GVH itself.

The RCC’s work focuses on four main target groups. The first set of economies involved in the framework of the RCC are of the regions of South-East and Eastern Europe, namely Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia and Ukraine. The work targeting these economies is regarded as core activity of the RCC.

The second group of beneficiaries of the work of the RCC are the countries, which belong to the Central European Competition Initiative (CECI). The Initiative is a forum for co-operation in competition matters, which was established by Central European competition authorities in 2003. It is a network type inter-agency (not inter-state) co-operation, which operates via workshops and informal meetings. Participating countries of this project are Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary.

The third beneficiary of the RCC’s work is the GVH itself. The RCC organises training for the GVH’s staff on different topics of competition law and policy. The agendas of these workshops are related to ongoing projects or hot topics and provide an excellent opportunity for staff to learn about state-of-the-art antitrust theory and enforcement practice.

Judges represent the fourth target group of the RCC’s activities. Seminars offered to judges provide judiciaries with an opportunity to improve their understanding of competition law and economics, exchange views on the latest developments in EU competition law, and discuss key challenges arising in competition law cases from a judicial perspective.