Chillin'Competition

The much awaited reform of the Belgian competition authority is now out in the open.

New positions are being created (see here for more):

– President;

– Chief Economist;

– General Counsel;

– General Prosecutor;

– 20 part time Assessors, i.e. 10 French speaking + 10 Dutch speaking => the assessors will hear cases within decisional chambers; those chambers will be composed of 2 assessors + the President).

All the info can be found in the Belgian Official Journal of 27 May 2013.

Now, the talk of the town about this recruitment process:

1. A puzzling feature of this call for application is that French will be tested for Dutch speaking applicants to the position of assessor (although they won’t hear cases in French), and vice versa; but no such test will take place for the Chief of Legal Affairs and the Chief Economist, who can be unilingual. Query why.

2. Some people have discretely lamented that (i) as usual in Belgium, the process will be heavily politicized; (ii) that the future organigram of the agency would be already decided; and (iii) that several of strong candidates would in turn be dissuaded to participate to the beauty context.

I have sought information on this. I have been repeatedly told that NOTHING has yet been decided. There is apparently no obvious candidate for any of those jobs => put simply, incumbents will not be favoured over new entrants and anyone interested shall apply.

3. Nothing seems to disqualify lawyers from private practice to apply for a job as part time assessor. Some rules on conflicts of interests, which to date do not exist, will need to be adopted, if the new authority wants to avoid endless procedural problems.

4. Nothing is said of the confidentiality of applications and of the members of the selection committee.

5. The deadline for applications is tight: 10 June. RUN!!!