Removed Tracks Write Competition History (Overview Of Competition Events For January And February 2023)

• Published date: 21 July 2023
• Subject Matter: orporate/Commercial Law, Antitrust/Competition Law, Compliance, Corporate and Company Law, Contracts and Commercial Law, Antitrust, EU Competition
• Law Firm: Havel & Partners s.r.o.
• Author: Mr Robert Neruda and Petra Joanna Pipkov'

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.

The Office for the Protection of Competition (Czech Competition Authority - CCA) has traditionally started the new year with resale price maintenance (RPM). What other competition titbits have we prepared for you? We will introduce you to important case law of the Court of Justice on abuse of dominance, decision-making practice in the field of bid rigging and, as usual, we will look at some procedural issues.

And there's that RPM again

Resale price maintenance is certainly the most frequently prosecuted vertical agreement. CCA is not behind the curve on this, as virtually every month demonstrates - and January was indeed no exception. We therefore recommend those who have not already done so to conduct a proper review of the set-up of sales systems and the way pricing issues are communicated within the distribution chain.

In January itself, the CCA issued two decisions concerning RPM. A fine of CZK 1.1 million was imposed on 'icí technika Brother for imposing fixed and minimum resale prices. Brother monitored compliance with the prices and invited retailers by e-mail to increase prices to the set level. It secured compliance by threatening to apply penalties. It was the enforcement of prices that the CCA considered an aggravating factor. On the other hand, the CCA saw a mitigating circumstance in the termination of the anti-competitive conduct before the proceedings were initiated. Other reasons for the reduction of the fine were the adoption of a compliance programme and the use of the settlement procedure. A compliance programme is of course useful mainly as a preventive measure. Indeed, a functioning compliance programme can detect anticompetitive conduct before the competition authority becomes aware of it. If the competitor then abandons the anticompetitive conduct immediately, this will have a positive effect on its position in the administrative proceedings several times over - the shorter duration will be reflected in the amount of the fine and in addition it will receive a discount for the existing compliance programme. In the event that you do not have a compliance program in place or it has not worked prior to the administrative proceedings, you will not lose the reduction in the fine if you commit to adopt or improve the compliance program. We wrote about the CCA's policy on compliance programs here.

The second decision of the CCA in January concerned EURONA, which was fined CZK 12.8 million. EURONA imposed an obligation in its terms and conditions for retailers to sell its goods at catalogue prices. EURONA then randomly monitored compliance with this obligation. In the event of a breach, EURONA contacted the retailer and informed it that it would cancel its registration if it did not comply with the set prices. However, according to the CCA, EURONA did not commit only RPM. Its terms and conditions also contained rules for the presentation of the retailer on the internet, with the proviso that its website must not contain an e-shop. On the contrary, it should have contained a link to EURONA's contact form. Failure to comply with this condition led to the cancellation of the dealer's registration. In this case, it is worth noting that this was the first time...