Mission and Competencies

The mission of the Office for the Protection of Competition (thereinafter “the Office”) is to ensure that market behaviour is in compliance with competition rules and benefits the consumers.

To achieve this goal

• the Office guides the competitors to behave in compliance with the principles of competition law;
• the Office interferes with practices distorting competition, e.g. cartel agreements, abuse of dominant position, etc.;
• at the same time the Office offers businesses the possibility to remedy their illegal conduct which has not resulted in a significant impact on the market so far.

The Office also supervises procedures of awarding public procurement and concessions, thus ensuring better transparency in public spending.

• The Office reviews the actions of procurement officials (contracting authorities);
• the Office exercises supervision over procurement officials (contracting authorities);
• the Office participates in the creation and amendment of public procurement and concession legislation.

The Office for the Protection of Competition secures surveillance pursuant to the Significant Market Power Act, and focuses mainly on:

• establishing correct relations between chain stores and their suppliers;
• elimination of unfair trading practices – for example imbalanced contractual arrangements or gaining of performance without other adequate considerations.  

The Office provides guidance in and monitors State aid in the Czech Republic to ensure that provision of state aid is in compliance with applicable European Community rules.

• The Office coordinates and monitors provision of State aid;
• the Office cooperates with the providers of State aid in notification of national state aid measures and submission of notifications to the European Commission for assessment;
• the Office provides guidance namely to State aid providers.

We supervise access to transport infrastructure, in particular:

• we approve the railway restriction plan
• assess the conditions for restricting the operation of the runway
• decide on the legality of the track declaration and capacity allocation
• decide on offences in this area
• maintain a list of public and non-public sidings and a list of airports