RIO DE JANEIRO, November 24. /TASS/. Antitrust agencies are poised to take an environment-based approach to their work in the digital area in the future, something that regulators in the BRICS countries are already practicing, Alexey Ivanov, director of the International Center of BRICS Competition Law and Policy at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, said on Thursday.

"The essence of the ecological approach - the ecoantitrust - is that digital systems should be considered as living biological organisms. Consequently, when it comes to the analysis and regulation of digital giants and their business strategies, it’s proposed to rely on the same laws by which natural systems function," he explained at a meeting of a BRICS task force for studying competition in digital markets.

BRICS is a group of countries comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"Agencies of the BRICS countries are already applying environmental methodology to review the behavior of players in digital markets, identify anti-competitive practices and analyze transactions. It was agreed at the task force meeting today that the antimonopoly authorities of the BRICS countries will issue a joint document that will contain methodological recommendations and describe the terms of reference of the joint regulatory approach to digital markets," he said.

The sixth meeting of the BRICS task force to study competition in digital markets is held in Rio de Janeiro as part of the BRICS+ Forum of Antitrust Agencies in Digital Competition, which, in addition to the five countries, is also attended by representatives of Argentina, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The forum is organized by the HSE International Centre for BRICS Competition Law and Policy together with the Getulio Vargas Foundation research centre (FGV) and the Administrative Council for Economic Defense, the Brazilian antitrust agency also known as CADE.