Immediate Concerns

As tackling transparency in competition policy meets the EU’s immediate concerns and launches the approximate road map set out in the EU — Ukraine Association Agreement, fast track legislative changes have already brought a new agenda for both business and policy makers. The long expected revision of unrealistically low thresholds for merger control and adopted guidelines on the calculation of fines for violating competition law is definitely one step forward towards predictability, the core pillar of every business plan and investment decision.

However, the profound novelties mentioned should be followed by considerable changes over the lifetime of the Association Agreement so as to bring the two regimes closer. These are adoption of similar safe harbour/block exemption regulations on vertical agreements and concerted practices, and technology transfer agreements. This will definitely require considerable resources. Thus, the forces pushing from the legal market appear to be extremely reasonable and up-to-date stakehoalders. In this sense it is hard to disagree with our cover story speaker, prominent practitioner Antonina Yaholnyk, as even very progressive changes do not work without the establishment of a transparent and non-discriminatory competition enforcement regime. Indeed, this is a good test for policy makers, which could be measured with the elimination of distortions in a number of sensitive industries and ban political interference in the competition area.

Happy reading,

Olga Usenko