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

Article 4 of the Act prohibits agreements restricting competition defined as agreements intended to or may result in the restriction of competition. As commonly admitted, the form of the agreement – be it an agreement or concerted practices among undertakings or decisions by an association of undertakings is irrelevant to the qualification.

Are excluded from the scope of the prohibition agreement …

The prohibition

Article 4 of the Act prohibits agreements restricting competition defined as agreements intended to or may result in the restriction of competition. As commonly admitted, the form of the agreement – be it an agreement or concerted practices among undertakings or decisions by an association of undertakings is irrelevant to the qualification.

Are excluded from the scope of the prohibition agreements restricting competition with a negligible effect on competition. Those are defined as agreements by undertakings gathering less than a treshold set in a legal regulation issued by the Antimonopoly Office.

According to the Decree of the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic No. 188/2021 Coll. dated 20 May 2021 which establishes thresholds to determine whether an agreement between undertakings, a concerted practice of undertakings or a decision of an association of undertakings has an insignificant effect on economic competition (effective 1 June 2021), such insignificant effect is granted in case of horizontal agreement if the combined market share of undertakings does not exceed 10% in the relevant market affected by the agreement. For an agreement between non-competitors, the market share held by each undertaking must not exceed 15% of said market. Those figures are reduced to 5% in both cases where competition is restricted by the cumulative effect of a network of similar agreements covering more than 30% of the market.

Agreements explicitly listed as restricting competition are : price fixing, output limitation, market allocation, boycott or discriminatory conditions, tying and bid rigging.

An agreement found to restrict competition can further be exempted from prohibition if it satisfies all three conditions set out in Article 4.4. To that end, the agreement shall (i) contributes to the improvement of production or distribution of goods while reserving a fair share of the benefits to the consumer, (ii) not impose on the undertakings restrictions not indispensable to such improvement and (iii) not allow the undertakings to eliminate competition in the relevant market.

It is to be noted that the Slovakian competition authority has power to withdraw a block exemption in individual cases if it finds out that an agreement has anticompetitive effects (Article 34).

Global Competition Law

631. The prohibition

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Les notions juridiques connexes

631. The prohibition

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