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The paper explores the changes the EU Directive on harmonizing certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions will bring about in Hungary, with a special focus placed on damages liability rules, the interaction of public and private enforcement of these rules, and the importance of class actions. Amendments of the Competition Act introduced in 2005 and 2009 had created new rules to promote the idea of private enforcement even before the Directive was adopted. Some of these rules remain unique even now, notably the legal presumption of a 10% price increase for cartel cases. However, subsequent cases decided by Hungarian courts did not reflect the sophistication of existing substantive and procedural rules. There has only ever been one judgment awarding damages, while most stand-alone cases involved minor competition law issues relating to contractual disputes. The paper looks at the most important substantial rules of tort law (damage, causality, joint and several liability), the co-operation of competition authorities and civil courts, as well as at (the lack of) class action procedures from the perspective of the interaction of public and private enforcement of competition law.
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On 17 April 2014, the Proposal for a Directive on antitrust damages actions was accepted by the European Parliament and sent to the EU Council of Ministers for final approval. In addition, a Recommendation was adopted in 2013 on common principles for injunctive and compensatory collective redress mechanisms in the Member States to meet the need for a coherent European approach to antitrust private enforcement. This package comes at a time when private antitrust enforcement is rapidly evolving in a number of Member States. At the same time however, it establishes several legal solutions that do not fit well with existing national instruments. The aim of this article is to address, in particular, Portuguese and Polish experiences on a number of specific issues surrounding antitrust private enforcement, such as collective redress and contingency fees. Some doubts will also be raised concerning the solutions established in the European package, suggesting that national experiences should not be overlooked.
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The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the application of competition law in the Slovak Republic since it became a member of the European Union 10 years ago. Special emphasis is placed on selected problems and questions which arose in the application of European competition rules and the need for an adjustment of Slovak competition legislation to EU requirements. The paper presents the relevant amendments in the Slovak Competition Act and analyses in detail their background. Slovak competition law has undergone many changes in the past 10 years, not always without problems. The aim of this paper is to identify the most important of those difficulties and explain why they have occurred. The correct application of national and EU competition rules by Slovak courts has proven to be one of the biggest challenge here, ultimately even causing the European Commission to intervene as amicus curiae. The actions taken by the European Commission in relation to competition matters within the Slovak Republic, and its resulting recommendations, will also be considered. The paper will outline how Slovak competition law has been step-by-step increasing its harmonisation with EU competition law over the last 10 years. Indeed, it is now possible to claim that Slovak competition legislation is fully harmonised with the rules of the European Union. The paper will thus mainly focus on those elements of Slovak law which can give a clear picture of the state of convergence of both legal systems. Nevertheless, the end of the road has not yet been reached. Further harmonisation of selected current topics within Slovak competition law will need to be assessed also. It will also be necessary to analyse which direction should Slovak competition law take in the future with regard to current EU trends. These issues include the need to find a balance between the protection of business secrets and the right of procedural parties to due process, especially in connection with the protection of leniency documents
More...Case comment to the judgment of the Court of the Competition and Consumer Protection of 10 December 2007 – Tele2 (Ref. No. XVII AmT 17/07)
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This paper is an attempt to evaluate the conceptual relationship between two central elements of the theory of antitrust: competition and consumer welfare. These two notions are analysed in their mutual dependency. In terms of methodology, the paper proposes to structurally separate competition from consumer welfare. This technique is successfully applied in the domain of legal philosophy when the correlation between law and morality is debated. The main purpose of this paper is to show that both competition and consumer welfare are economic values of fundamental importance with no ex antehierarchical dominance of consumer welfare over competition. In case of conflict, priority might be given to either of these values depending on the context of the assessment. This paper has a discursive character, it constitutes a response to Dawid Miąsik’s article entitled: ‘Controlled Chaos with Consumer Welfare as the Winner – a Study of the Goals of Polish Antitrust Law’ which was published in the ‘Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies’ 2008 vol. 1.
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The article presents key developments in Polish antitrust legislation and case law in 2009. Regarding legislation the article focuses on a new leniency regulation and legal acts amending the Polish Competition and Consumer Protection Act, adopted in 2008, that entered into force in 2009. The article provides a general characteristics of antitrust cases, mainly ones ruled by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal in Warsaw. A description of cases is divided into thematic parts referring to particular kinds of practices restricting competition, identification of relevant markets, relationships between the Competition Act and other legal acts and problems related to adopting and implementing decisions by the UOKiK President.
More...Case comment to the judgement of the Supreme Court of 14 January 2009 – Rychwał Commune (Ref. No. III SK 24/08)
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The main aim of this article is to present current judicial practice, concerning hearing cases stemming from appeals of Polish Competition Authority decisions. The relevant court tends to review the cases only on merits, omitting to address procedural infringements, clearly stated by the parties in appeals. In author’s opinion this common practice does not have a legal leg to stand on. Author analyses relevant laws and precedents pointing out, that full review of the decision is Court’s duty, which could not be neglected. Furthermore, according to ECHR rulings procedural guaranties should be assured on high level, especially in matters, where quasi-criminal fines are concerned. As a legal practitioner Author perceives possible crippling effect on effectiveness, assuming that the Court would have to review all steps of the proceedings before Competition Authority. So in conclusion Author proposes a compromise solution asserting, that the Court should at least address all procedural infringement counts stated in appeal.
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Is there, in the context of the recent developments related to the Lisbon Treaty, a need for substantial change with respect to the scope and application of legal professional privilege (LPP) and the privilege against self-incrimination (PASI) in competition law proceedings before the European Commission? To answer this question this article first briefly describes the current scope of LPP and PASI in EU competition law enforcement proceedings. This is followed by a presentation of the impact that the binding effect of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Charter) and the EU’s prospective accession to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention) may have on LPP and PASI. This analysis includes reasons why it may be necessary for the Commission and the EU Courts to reconsider the current scope of the privileges, and examines what could be considered as significant changes in this respect. In the event arguments for radical reform do not find the requisite political support, the article elaborates some nuanced improvements which could be implemented.
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In this article it is presented the classification of the endorsements in the international promissory note legislation, in Romania and in Moldova’s ones. In the conditions of forming the free market in Moldova and in Romania measures were taken regarding the use of the promissory note in the internal and international commercial relations. The judicial circulation of the promissory note is made, even if it hasn’t been explicitly drawn to order, through endorsement. The classification of the endorsements is very diversified according to the indication of the beneficiary and to the effects they produce.
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This paper describes the Australian Tooltechnic case, in which the antitrust authority – for the first time in history – has authorized application of resale price maintenance by that undertaking. Besides the presentation of the fact of the case, this article evaluates legal and economic arguments which determined the authorization of such practice and also their relevance for the application of Polish and European prohibition of competition restricting agreements relating to RPM.
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Über die Bekämpfung der illoyalen Konkurrenz als über eine Rechtserscheinung und Kategorie fängt man an zu sprechen in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrun- derts. Zu der Zeit beginnt die Gesetzgebung in dieser Materie vorzukommen. Unter dem Begriff Bekämpfung der illoyalen Konkurrenz versteht man eine ganze Reihe von Manahmen und Aktivitäten der durch das Gesetz bevollmächtigten Subjekte zum Ziel der Verhinderung oder Abwendung des illoyalen Verhaltens der wirtschaftlichen Subjekte auf dem Markt. Illoyale Konkurrenz ist also dem Markt und der Marktwirtschaft immanent. Da illoyale Konkurrenz eine unzuverlässige und sehr schädliche Erscheinun-gsform ist, ergreit jeder Staat Maregeln zu ihren Abwendung aus dem Wirtschaftsleben. Zu diesem Zweck schufen einige Länder spezielle Gesetze über die Bekämpfung der illoyalen Konkurrenz, während die anderen Länder diese Materie durch allgemeine Vorschriften des Zivilrechts regulieren. Es werden heute in allen Ländern zwei grundlegenden Formen zum Schutz von der illoyalen Konkurrenz getroffen: bürgerlich-rechtlicher (vermögenchtlicher) und strafrechtlicher Schutz. Ohne Rücksicht auf de iure zahlreiche Mittel des Rechtsschutzes von der illoyalen Konkurrenz soll man hervorheben, da es nicht vollständig möglich ist, die illoyale Konkurrenz aus dem Wirtschaftsleben zu eliminieren. Sie wird immer de facto vorhanden sein, solange die Marktwirtschaft existiert - es wird sie nur mehr oder weniger geben.
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The Government Emergency Ordinance 88/2018 aims at removing insolvency law enforcement practices for a purpose other than that for which it was issued, and namely to delay the settlement of the petitions for opening the bankruptcy and at the same time seeks to protect the business environment from non-payment of debtors’ in insolvency current claims. This is legitimate, but, unfortunately, the same ordinance favors the parallel proceedings by registering in the list of creditors the budgetary receivables as receivables under cancellation condition until the contentious-administrative court settles the action for annulment of the administrative-tax act, as well as by allowing individual enforcement at the same time with the concurrent and equitable procedure of insolvency. It is positive to recognize the possibility of conversion, the assignment of the budgetary receivable, as well as the reorganization of the debtor by reducing the budgetary receivable, but, as a legislative technique, the way of regulating these institutions is not free of criticism.
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The representatives of administrative law science exhibit an increasing interest in matters of renewable energy sources. Among more detailed issues, the axiology concerning renewable energy sources is being investigated to a far greater depth. Axiology issues are the main focus of this paper. The author tries to establish whether it is viable to correlate the development and use of renewable energy sources with the principle of solidarity understood as an intergenerational relation. The conducted research leads to the conclusion that such relation is possible on axiological and legal grounds
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