EGYPT Law and Practice Contributed by: Alex Saleh, Asad Ahmad, Hegui Taha and Farida Koura, GLA & Company
these experts will not have any decision-making powers. 7.2 Contacting Third Parties This is part of the upcoming ECA scheme. How - ever, there are no provisions under the Egyptian Competition Law or the Executive Regulations addressing this. It is yet to be considered under a new batch of ECA guidelines, if at all. 7.3 Confidentiality ECA employees have a duty to keep information and sources confidential. This information and data (as well as the relevant sources) will not be used for any purposes other than those for which they were submitted. Commercially sensitive information is not usually required for the purpose of the notification. Any ECA employee having access to commercial information of any entity is generally prohibited from working for a competitor of the concerned party for a period of two years from the date the employee gained access to the confidential information. 7.4 Co-Operation With Other Jurisdictions The ECA has been implementing several pro - tocols with different jurisdictions recently, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and many Arab states to establish a co-operative ecosystem. In 2019, the ECA signed a bilateral institutional partnership with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the Federal German Competition Authority. This has con - tributed to strengthening the institutional and enforcement capacity of the ECA through knowl - edge sharing and internal capacity building. The successful co-operation incentivised both sides to renew the Joint Declaration of Intent in 2020
to establish a more extensive level of co-oper - ation with hands-on case handling experience sharing, policy review and guidelines develop - ment as well as more practical on-the-job work co-ordination and knowledge sharing. The ECA also co-operates with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (the “COMESA”) Competition Commission regarding merger notifications. Article 25 (6) of the 2004 COMESA Competition Regulations states that the Commission may notify member states sub- ject to a merger and request their written opin - ions. In terms of requests from the COMESA Competition Commission, the ECA reviewed 21 notifications and examined the potential impact of the mergers on the Egyptian market. 8. Appeals and Judicial Review 8.1 Access to Appeal and Judicial Review As a general rule, ECA decisions are administra - tive in nature and can be appealed before the administrative court (unless the matter is referred to the prosecutor, the competence of the crimi - nal court or, more particularly, the criminal courts which are specialised in considering economic crimes). Specifically, if the ECA decision involves a rejection of the “economic concentration”, the decision could be appealed. 8.2 Typical Timeline for Appeals A rejection of an “economic concentration” must be appealed within 30 days of a notification of the decision being made. From a practical per - spective (and in general) litigation in Egypt is a lengthy process. Given that the pre-merger ”control” has been newly introduced by virtue of the Amendments, there are no related suc - cessful appeals.
181 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook