36 EUROPEAN NETWORK DOSSIER Strong and resilient European cooperation Faced with the economic impact of an unprecedented public health crisis, the competition authorities of the European Union immediately mobilised to adapt their resources to the situation in order to protect citizens and consumers as effectively as possible. The French Authority was no exception in this regard. The past year was also marked by the entry into force of enhanced intervention tools, with the transposition of the ECN+ directive. Between responsiveness in the face of an emergency and proactiveness to meet the challenges that are looming, RESOLUTELY COMMITTED IN A TIME OF CRISIS below is an update on the latest developments Continued sustained activity in European competition policy. Despite a particularly complicated context on account of the Covid-19 epi- demic, representatives of the European Commission and national competition authorities (NCAs) met 18 times in 2020 in the context of the European Competi- tion Network (ECN). This illustrates the strong desire of its members to safe- guard European cooperation in the area of competition, and to confront the excep- tional circumstances. The work focused on convergence in merger control and antitrust, abuse of dominant position and illegal horizontal and vertical prac- tices. The question of implementing competition law in the specific context of the public health crisis was also a cen- tral issue. Immediate responsiveness to support economic activity From March 2020 on, the European Com- mission and the European Competition Network set up a temporary framework to assess possible anticompetitive prac- tices that might have been implemented in the context of cooperation between companies to respond to emergency situations arising from the pandemic.