AI use by competition watchdogs on the rise
Lawyers at McCann FitzGerald say that the increasing use of AI by competition watchdogs across Europe and beyond is likely to lead to a rise in new investigations and dawn raids.
They point out that, at the same time as anti-competitive practices are adapting to exploit emerging technologies, competition authorities are also using AI to gather market intelligence, increase efficiency, and improve enforcement.
In an analysis on the firm’s website, its lawyers explore the use of such tools by authorities at EU and national level.
Tyres probe
They say that a European Commission’s investigation into tyre manufacturers represents the most high-profile instance of AI-assisted competition-law enforcement.
The EU body suspected that several companies in the tyre industry, including Michelin, may have used public communications to signal and, therefore, co-ordinate future sales prices.
The commission used AI to help analyse hundreds of thousands of public statements and earnings calls to flag potential signals of co-ordination, which led to dawn raids being carried out in January 2024.
Michelin challenged the decision before the EU’s General Court on the basis that the commission’s findings from the analysis were not strong enough to justify inspections.
AI use ‘implicitly validated’
“The decision of the General Court implicitly validated the use of AI to screen public information as the basis to carry out a dawn raid, finding that the approach adopted by the commission sufficient to justify the inspection for the main period,” McCann FitzGerald notes.
“Crucially, what is clear from the judgment is that it was the combination of quantitative analysis (carried out by AI) together with manual qualitative analysis that rendered the screening methodology legitimate,” it adds.
The firm’s lawyers say that the case illustrates that the commission now has the tools to analyse extensive amounts of publicly available data.
“As a result, it is likely that we will see a more proactive approach to competition-law enforcement and much more cases in the future,” they add.
E-discovery tools
McCann FitzGerald also points to the use of AI by national competition authorities, with Spain’s CNMC deploying an AI-assisted tool trained on the Spanish public-procurement database, which relies on machine learning to analyse and classify bids to assess whether they are potentially collusive.
The Lithuanian Competition Council has piloted the use of AI-driven e-discovery tools to assist in cartel detection – including an AI-enhanced document-review platform designed to identify signs of collusion.
The firm notes that Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is also trialling an AI tool to identify bid-rigging and collusion in bids for public contracts.
‘Increasingly necessary’
It adds that a scheme co-funded by the EU, the Digital Transformation in Competition Law Enforcement (DICE) project, was launched in January to reduce gaps in digital enforcement capacity and enhance the AI capabilities of 15 competition authorities across the EU.
The McCann FitzGerald lawyers say that the incorporation of AI into regular enforcement practice is a large undertaking, but competition authorities across the globe are recognising that it is becoming increasingly necessary.
“While authorities are by no means equally advanced in the development and deployment of these new technologies, a general willingness to adapt and embrace new operational methods can clearly be seen across the board,” they conclude.