Mária T. Patakyová: Initial Thoughts on Influence of Artificial Intelligence on Bid Rigging

Collusions within a public procurement procedure have a significant effect on both proper functioning of competition and proper outcome of the procurement procedure. This paper aims to elaborate on the role of artificial intelligence within bid rigging. It shortly presents how algorithms may mitigate investigations conducted by competition authorities. On the other hand, the paper briefs on difficulties which might be brought into competition law enforcement by application of algorithms and artificial intelligence by undertakings. The initial thoughts on these issues discussed in this paper are that artificial intelligence has both positive and negative effects on the bid rigging enforcement.

Balázs Horváthy: The Values-Driven Trade Policy of the European Union

As the primary objectives of the European integration process in the 1950s aimed at deepening the economic cooperation between the Member States, the external dimension of the Community activities had predominantly of economic and trade-related nature. Accordingly, the objectives and principles of the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) were laid down in a homogeneous, consistent and relatively closed structure. This consistency was driven, above all, by the objective of the liberalization, which allowed the legal and policy framework of the CCP to develop in line with the Community’s free trade commitments to the international economic order, especially to the GATT. However, the expansion of the external policy horizon of the European Communities and the introduction of new policy fields led to conflicts of objectives more frequently, causing tensions between the CCP and other external policy areas. In other terms, the separation of the external activities presented dilemmas above all in policy decisions when the policy areas concerned had overlapping or conflicting objectives. Consequently, e.g. the economic sanctions might have been practically difficult to impose, because the policy decision required not only the economic and trade concerns to be taken into account, but the foreign policy interests had to be reflected as well. In other words, the main question was whether the CCP could be determined in isolation of its own logic based on the concept of the gradual, progressive liberalization, or values and concerns of other external policy fields, being not necessarily of trade-related nature, could (or should) be respected in the same way.