The joint Competition Training Centre of the OECD and the Hungarian Competition Authority plays a key role in the development of competition authorities in the region

Bence Gerlaki added that the ROK assists competition authorities with its training and knowledge-sharing activities, strengthens the fair functioning of markets and contributes to the economic development of the region. He highlighted the importance of cooperation between Hungary and the OECD, with particular regard to economic growth, competition policy, the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, the digital transition and addressing demographic challenges in the Central European region.

He called it exemplary that the ROK – whose 17 beneficiary countries include six Central Asian countries – is not only an educational but also an expert center, whose economic and competition law experts share the best established procedures and case studies with interested parties in the framework of experience exchanges.

Bence Gerlaki also said that the cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and the Hungarian Competition Authority is excellent, in which consumer protection plays a prominent role. As an example of this, he highlighted the price monitoring system established in the online space almost two years ago, which allows for the monitoring of food price changes in real time, and resulted in a price reduction of approximately 7 percent in the first three months after its introduction.

The system currently shows the prices of 2,000 food products in almost 80 product categories, and according to plans, it can be supplemented by monitoring another 20 product categories within a few months. The Hungarian government considers combating food inflation, and within that reducing the burden on families and pensioners, as a priority task, and is ready to intervene with any market regulation tool to achieve this, he added.