In recent years, the landscape of competition enforcement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has witnessed increased emphasis on inter-agency cooperation. The regional Arab Competition Network, has held high-level meetings—including its fourth annual session in May 2025—and several bilateral MoUs have been signed among national enforcers. These developments reflect a growing acknowledgment of the benefits of coordination. Still, concrete practical impacts are still only moderate.
Rationale for inter-agency cooperation
Competition authorities serve a critical role in safeguarding market efficiency and protecting consumer welfare. Their two core responsibilities are merger control and antitrust enforcement. Through merger control, authorities review transactions that may reduce competition and impose remedies or prohibit deals where necessary. Antitrust enforcement involves investigating and sanctioning practices such as cartels, abuse of dominance, and restrictive agreements. However, domestic competition authorities are geographically limited in their investigative powers by national borders. On the other hand, in a global economy, national authorities often face challenges when dealing with international cartels. Similarly, while transactions involving large multinational businesses may draw significant attention, domestic enforcers may have difficulties to identify less prominent transactions on their own.
To address these difficulties, competition enforcers globally—and increasingly in the MENA region—have turned to inter-agency cooperation. These partnerships help ensure that enforcers can share information, align enforcement actions and build institutional capacity. Cooperation not only increases effectiveness of enforcement but also reduces the risk of conflicting decisions and promotes greater consistency in applying competition law.
Bilateral agreements—the building blocks of cooperation
One of the most frequently employed mechanisms for inter-agency collaboration are MoUs. These (typically) bilateral arrangements often establish procedures for exchange of information on ongoing review and enforcement—including non-public information when permitted—conducting joint investigations and sharing resources. In the MENA region, such MoUs are becoming increasingly common. Noteworthy examples include the MoU signed between the Saudi General Authority for Competition (GAC) and the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) in October 2022. This MoU represents a significant step in fostering cooperation between two of the region's most active antitrust enforcers. Another example is the MoU between GAC and Kuwait's Competition Protection Agency (CPA) of 2022 as well as the more recent MoU between the GAC and the Iraqi Competition and Antitrust Council (CAC), signed in February 2025. Furthermore, in April 2025 following ECA's second annual conference, the ECA signed MoUs with both the UAE Ministry of Economy and the Eurasian Economic Union reflecting its ambition to position itself as a key regional player in competition policy. Earlier MoUs, such as those between the ECA and the COMESA Competition Commission of 2016 and the ECA and Nigeria's Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission of 2023, further illustrate Egypt's outward-looking enforcement posture.
Multilateral platforms: strengthening regional ties
Beyond bilateral agreements, multilateral platforms have emerged to facilitate broader cooperation. For instance, the Arab Competition Network launched in March 2022. It serves as a forum for competition enforcers of the Arab League Member Sates. The Arab Competition Network is intended to allow its members to exchange know-how and experiences, share information on ongoing reviews and investigation as well as enforcement, and developing best practices. In May 2025, the Arab Competition Network held its most recent annual meeting. As part of the meetings closing declaration, the Arab Competition Network announced a range of initiatives aimed at enhancing inter-agency coordination. Among these were commitments to improve communication channels, establish specialized working groups, and implement targeted capacity-building programs. The Arab Competition Network also reaffirmed its proposal from the network's 2024 annual meeting to create a shared electronic database to allow member agencies to access enforcement decisions, policy documents, and training materials in real time.
These developments mirror the structure and objectives of more mature organizations such as the International Competition Network (ICN) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Both organizations have long championed the exchange of best practices, convergence of legal standards, and mutual assistance among competition authorities. The Arab Competition Network draws inspiration from these frameworks while tailoring its initiatives to the specific needs and institutional capacities of MENA jurisdictions.
From ambition to impact: assessing effectiveness
Despite these promising developments, questions remain about the effectiveness of regional cooperation. Many of the MoUs concluded by MENA competition enforcers do not appear to have much practical impact. It is difficult to assess whether authorities are using the tools these MoUs established. Still, to date there is little evidence of MENA competition authorities cooperating on cross-border investigation of anticompetitive practices or calling in transactions they were made aware of by other MENA regulators. The Arab Competition Network also does not appear to have changed this situation significantly.
Moreover, several MENA jurisdictions have only recently adopted or modernized their competition regimes. The Saudi merger control and antitrust regimes are increasingly actively enforced since the Kingdom amended their competition law in 2019. Morocco and Kuwait followed shortly after implementing new regimes in 2021. The ECA was traditionally comparatively active in enforcing the country's behavioral antitrust regime. On the other hand, there was limited merger control activity in Egypt until the country transitioned to a pre-closing notification merger control regime effective June 2024. The UAE antitrust and merger control regime were largely dormant. Since, new merger control turnover-based thresholds were implemented effective beginning of April 2025, there has been a considerable increase in filings. However, there is limited enforcement of behavioral antitrust regulations in the UAE. Other jurisdictions throughout the MENA region remain largely dormant to date. Hence, while regional initiatives—such as the Arab Competition Network—aim to involve all Arab League member countries, only a minority of them are ready to cooperate meaningfully on competition matters.
In practice, cooperation appears to be limited to few observable instances. One example includes information-sharing between the ECA and the COMESA Competition Commission in the context of merger control filings, where turnover data was reportedly exchanged. However, systematic joint investigations, parallel reviews, or harmonized enforcement actions remain rare. While informal collaboration likely occurs during forums, workshops, and bilateral meetings, these interactions are not always formalized or publicly documented. We understand that cooperation still is largely limited to policy matters and does not involve exchange on ongoing transactions or investigations or enforcement. Also, ad hoc cooperation appears rare.
Nevertheless, signs of convergence are emerging. MENA authorities are gradually aligning their merger control regimes and substantive assessment criteria. This trend reduces friction for cross-border transactions and improves the predictability of outcomes. As laws and enforcement practices become more consistent, cooperation among competition enforcers will naturally become more seamless and productive.
Alignment of MENA competition enforcement: a double-edge sword
Aligning legal frameworks may lead to synchronized merger control reviews as well as convergence in the way different jurisdictions assess competitive effects of international transactions. For businesses, this presents both opportunities and risks. On the positive side, coordination among agencies can lead to more consistent outcomes and reduce duplicative burdens. Clearer and more aligned standards also facilitate legal compliance and increase regulatory consistency. Consequently, obtaining merger control clearance in one jurisdiction is often viewed favorably by other cooperative authorities, who may regard it as an indicative benchmark of the transaction's overall compatibility with competition principles and welfare. However, the reverse is also true: if a concern is flagged by one authority, others within cooperative frameworks may take note and apply heightened scrutiny in their own competitive assessments. In this way, inter-agency collaboration increases not only consistency but also exposure. A finding of anti-competitive conduct in one jurisdiction can prompt parallel investigations in others—particularly in the context of cartel enforcement, where authorities may act on shared intelligence or public admissions of wrongdoing. For companies operating across the region, these dynamics underscore the importance of robust compliance frameworks that anticipate and address the growing interconnectivity among MENA competition authorities.
In summary, while inter-agency cooperation in the MENA region is still evolving, the trajectory is clear. Competition authorities are increasingly aware of the benefits of collaboration and are taking steps to build the institutional infrastructure necessary for meaningful coordination. As enforcement regimes mature and trust builds among agencies, the region is likely to see deeper and more impactful forms of cooperation. For firms operating in or entering MENA markets, staying informed of these developments and preparing for the operational implications of multi-jurisdictional enforcement will be essential.
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