Archive – Competition (2023)

The full effectiveness of the amendment to the Act on Significant Market Power and Unfair Commercial Practices (SMPA) is just a few days away. That is why we are here with the sixth and final part of the SMPA miniseries, in which we will touch upon further questions related to contracting under the

We present you the forty-second instalment of our information service on events that occurred in the world of competition law in October 2023. Again, this is a purely subjective selection of events that might be of interest to you from our point of view.

Whether you are a supplier or a buyer, you will certainly be happy if your goods sell well with end customers. And only few activities help this more than the correctly set marketing support. Particularly at the retail level, it is common for advertising or promotions to be arranged by the buyers, b

There are 30 days left until the end of the year at the time of publishing this article. Thirty days is the payment period that buyers with significant market power should apply in their contracts with the affected suppliers of food and agricultural products from 1 January. And not only on paper. We

Have you run out of flowers at your hotel or a particular food item on the shelf at your local shop?  Are you missing an agricultural commodity that you need to process your own products? For the ordinary buyer, there is nothing easier than to dial the supplier’s phone number. However, if you are a

When the former version of the SMPA was in force, virtually only the operators of food retail chains had significant market power. The amendment to the SMPA, which takes full effect on January 1, 2024, has substantially broadened the scope of companies affected and the group of products subject to t

Autumn has only just arrived, but shopping centres are already starting to put on their Christmas outfits. As quickly as the end of the year, an important part of the 2022 amendment to the Act on Significant Market Power and Unfair Commercial Practices (SMPA) is coming into force. So, it is really h

In early September, I was at the IBA Annual Competition Conference in Florence. I like those two days. I extend my summer, experience a beautiful city, meet friends, and even manage an inspiring morning run. But mostly I’m going to find out what’s driving antitrust around the world. This year again,

The sale of food is currently a much-debated topic across society, at least when it comes to prices. This area is subject to significant control under the Act on Unfair Terms in Food Trade. The Act contains almost 60 different unfair terms that affect not only prices. However, the interpretation of

We present to you the forty-first instalment of the information service on events that occurred in the world of competition law in September 2023. Again, this is a purely subjective selection of those events that we found significant or interesting.

The Office for the Protection of Competition (the Czech Competition Authority or the “CCA”) kept busy even during the summer as it imposed three fines for resale price maintenance (“RPM”) in the pet food and pet supplies sector. All three companies monitored the compliance of the sellers with their

If you have ever come across competition law, you know that the competition rules are almost identical in the EU. In the area of cartel agreements, EU rules even prevent Member States from prohibiting agreements that EU law does not prohibit. The more significant differences were in procedural pract

We present you with the fortieth anniversary edition of our newsletter. It focuses on events that took place in the world of competition law in the summer of 2023. Our regular readers know that this is a purely subjective selection of events that we found significant or noteworthy for some reason.

In the fourth and final episode of the "Amendment of the Czech Competition Act in a Nutshell" series, we focus on what the proceedings before the competition authority often end up being, i.e. sanctions and their form. In the previous episodes, we have dealt with novelties based more on the initiati

The European Commission fined Illumina a record €432 million for implementing the acquisition of GRAIL without the Commission’s approval. The fine represents the maximum amount the Commission could have imposed under EU competition rules in this case – 10% of the company's annual turnover. The fine

In the third episode of the series "Amendment of the Czech Competition Act in a Nutshell", we focus on the new tools that an undertaking can use to mitigate the effects of a fining decision. Given the change in the fine calculation methodology that came with the new 2018 Notice on the imposition of

The investigation of anticompetitive conduct is a demanding and complex discipline, often requiring extensive examination of the functioning of the markets concerned and the interactions between market participants. Securing evidence can be complicated. It can also be time-consuming to analyse. But

At the end of last month, the Regional Court in Brno declared null and void two decisions of the Office for the Protection of Competition, which fined collective management entities, OSA and INTERGRAM, for alleged abuse of dominant position. The Court (in line with the reasoning proposed by HAVEL &

On Friday, 14 July 2023, the long-awaited amendment to the Czech Competition Act (CCA) was published in the Collection of Laws. Its main objective is to implement the ECN+ Directive (which is intended to strengthen the position of competition authorities). However, the Czech legislator used this to

The EU regulation on the control of foreign subsidies enters into force. The Regulation is intended to provide the EU with a tool to protect the internal market from subsidies provided by third countries. The Regulation gives the European Commission the power to review, on its own initiative, subsid

We present to you the thirty-ninth instalment of the information service regarding events that occurred in the world of competition law in April 2023. Regular readers know that this is necessarily a purely subjective selection, and one simply cannot expect complete objectivity from it.

We present to you the thirty-eighth instalment of the information service regarding events that occurred in the world of competition law in April 2023. Regular readers know that this is necessarily a purely subjective selection, and one simply cannot expect complete objectivity from it.

Recently, we have heard an unusual amount of public discussion about the need for the Competition Authority to intervene and provide remedies. This is particularly true in the context of rising food prices and attempts to point to particular culprits. Politicians and various experts make statements

For the weekly Ekonom, we answered questions about developments in competition law. All our answers did not fit into the article published in No. 17/2023, so we are reprinting here the full text of the questions and our answers regarding green antitrust, bid-rigging, high fines for resale price mana

We present to you the thirty-seventh instalment of the information service regarding events that occurred in the world of competition law in March 2023. Regular readers know that this is necessarily a purely subjective selection, and one simply cannot expect complete objectivity from it.

We present to you the thirty-sixth instalment of our newsletter on events that occurred in the world of competition law in January and February 2023. Regular readers will not be surprised that this is a purely subjective selection.

This is how one could sum up a dispute between two well-known producers of baking powder mixtures – the food industry Goliath, Dr. Oetker (as plaintiff), against the Czech David, Labeta (as defendant). And it was the depiction of the dessert in the form of a molehill on the box of Labeta’s Crumb Cak