Global Competition Law is primarly a practitioner's guide presenting the most salient aspects of the major competition laws country by country, giving an overview of their structure and most charasteristic elements.
Global Competition Law also provides insight into possible future developments in the field.

Global Competition Law

The Greek Competition Act provides for two types of exemptions from the prohibition in Section 1(1): individual and block exemptions. An individual exemption may be granted where all of the four conditions set forth in Section 1(3) are satisfied. That is, the agreement or practice must contribute to improving the production or distribution of goods or technical or economic progress and allow consu …

Exemptions

Section 1 of the Competition Act prohibits any agreements, decisions and concerted practices which have as their object or effect the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition. Just as in Article 101 TFEU, Section 1 of the Greek Competition Act includes a non-exhaustive list of practices that come within the prohibition, including price fixing, allocating markets, controlling production, applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions or making an agreement conditional upon the acceptance of unrelated terms. According to Section 1(2) of the Competition Act, any agreements, decisions or concerted decisions that breach Section 1(1) are null and void.

Section 1A of the Competition Act as inserted by Law No 4886/2022 with effect from 1 July 2022, is entitled “Invitation to collude and announcement relating to communicating future pricing intentions for products and services between competitors”. According to Section 1, it is prohibited for an undertaking to propose, coerce, motivate, or in any way invite another undertaking to participate in an agreement between undertakings or in decisions of associations of undertakings or in concerted practices aimed at preventing, restricting, or distorting competition in the Greek territory. 

Section 1A (2) lists the circumstances in which an undertaking is prohibited from disclosing prices, discounts, supply or credit information about products or services it supplies or sources. 

However, undertakings with a total turnover of less than EUR 50 million and fewer than 250 employees are excluded from the application of Section 1A (1) and Section 1A (2). 

The prohibition

The Greek Competition Act provides for two types of exemptions from the prohibition in Section 1(1): individual and block exemptions. An individual exemption may be granted where all of the four conditions set forth in Section 1(3) are satisfied. That is, the agreement or practice must contribute to improving the production or distribution of goods or technical or economic progress and allow consumers a fair share of the benefit. At the same time, it must not impose restrictions which are not indispensable to obtaining such objectives, nor allow an undertaking to eliminate competition in a substantial part of the relevant market.

Before the adoption of Act No 3959/2011, undertakings had to notify their agreements to benefit from an individual exemption. Now, in line with Regulation No 1/2003, Greek undertakings must assess their own agreements with regard to the competition rules. If they comply with the conditions for exemption, they are automatically exempted (Section 3).

Law No 703/77 authorized the Competition Commission to declare certain categories of agreements or concerted practices valid, wholly or in part. Now, Section 1(4) of the new Greek Competition Act only provides that EU block exemption regulations are applicable even if the practices do not affect trade between Member States.

According to Section 1A (3), as inserted by Article 4 of Law No 4886/2022, practices that fall under Sections 1A (1) and (2) are not prohibited, as long as they meet the conditions of Section 1 (3) above by analogy.  

Global Competition Law

340. Exemptions

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Les notions juridiques connexes

340. Exemptions

Demandez un accès gratuit au contenu exclusif Livv – juristes d’entreprise

Les notions juridiques connexes

Demandez un accès gratuit
au contenu exclusif Livv – juristes d’entreprise