The Memorandum of Cooperation signed between the Hellenic Competition Commission and the University of the Aegean, by the President of the Hellenic Competition Commission Professor Ioannis Lianos and the Dean of the University of the Aegean Professor Chrysi Vitsilaki aims to consolidate and strengthen cooperation between the two parties. Priority was given to the creation of a joint working group for maritime cabotage in order to create a digital space and an application to facilitate the participation of citizens (citizens science) in monitoring the operation of the relevant markets.

 Actions will include educating and raising public awareness, especially of students and researchers on healthy competition issues. The team will work, among other things, to expand the HCC Economic Intelligence platform of the Hellenic Competition Commission and to process data from the prices applied to coastal and ferry connections in Greece, creating a database and special data processing algorithms (data analytics) in real time, which will be based on an application (app) that will be developed by the University of the Aegean and where citizens and consumers may enter price information with the aim to raise the awareness of the citizens against anticompetitive practices (competition advocacy). 

On behalf of the University of the Aegean, the coordinator of the activities, Professor Maria Lekakou, participated in the meeting held at the offices of the Competition Commission on 8.1.2021, where she presented the main points of the cooperation and where the common actions for 2021 were decided, and exchanged the signed Memorandum of Cooperation with the President of the Commission.