The ASEAN Competition Compliance Experience Survey-Study (ACCESS) – Launch of the ACCESS Report

The ASEAN Competition Compliance Experience Survey-Study (ACCESS) is part of the research project “Developing Competition Law within the ASEAN Economic Community” supported by the EW Barker Centre for Law and Business at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law. ACCESS was undertaken by Dr Burton Ong and Dr Andrea Gideon to study the opportunities for, and obstacles towards, greater harmonisation and convergence between the national competition law frameworks of the ASEAN Member States. The empirical electronic survey conducted between November 2019 and February 2020 relied on the inputs given by over 100 survey participants familiar with competition law matters in the ASEAN region. Their responses were aggregated and anonymised before they were analysed. ACCESS is, to our knowledge, the first empirical survey study of this kind which seeks bottom-up views from stakeholders within the regional competition law community.

Preliminary findings were stress-tested in two stakeholder workshops. The first workshop was held on 27 April 2021, with the support of the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore, and was a closed-door event with invited government officers from the national competition authorities of the ASEAN Member States. The second workshop was held on 21 May 2021 and brought together competition law practitioners, advisors and academics from different ASEAN Member States.

The results of the first phase of ACCESS are presented in this ACCESS Report which offers preliminary recommendations for what future concrete steps might be taken by the AMSs in furtherance of the harmonisation / convergence goals of the ASEAN Economic Community as set out in the AEC Blueprint and the ASEAN Competition Action Plan 2025.

Any queries relating to, or feedback arising from, this Report may be addressed to Competition_law@nus.edu.sg.

Download the Report here.