OECD Competition Assessment Reviews: Greece

The work undertaken by the Greek authorities in recent years to reinforce
competition law and the Hellenic Competition Commission, to simplify business
administration and to liberalise professional services have demonstrated the
political willingness to address the problem of existing regulatory barriers
to competition that have contributed to holding back the economic recovery.

The OECD Competition Assessment Project, through the scrutiny of legislation
in four sectors of the Greek economy, food processing, retail trade, building
materials and tourism, has identified 336 areas where particular reform can be
undertaken, from a total of 539 provisions that were selected using the OECD
Competition Assessment Toolkit.

If our recommendations are implemented, benefits to consumers in Greece and to
the Greek economy should arise in all four sectors. Throughout this report, we
seek to identify the sources of those benefits and where possible provide
quantitative estimates. Estimates are made on the basis of experiences of
deregulation in other countries in some instances, or by relating conservative
estimates of efficiency gains to the overall size of the business activity
affected.