St. Martin's Conference 2015 was concluded with a debate on significant market power

The second day of the conference on current trends and innovations in the competition law launched three parallel workshops.

Kamil Nejezchleb from the Cartel Unit of the Czech Office led the seminar focused on prioritization and the 'de minimis' regulation. Profesor Josef Bejček from Masaryk University and attorney Jiří Kindl from AK Weil, Gotshal&Manges presented their contributions. Josef Bejček intended to prioritize the potential risks as arbitrariness, discrimination or demoralization of competitors and subjectivisation of competition authority. Jiří Kindl compared then the approach to the ´de minimis´ rule and prioritization by the Office and the European Commission. During an informal and practical workshop on the settlement procedure led by Head of Cartel unit Igor Pospíšil, there were presented the opinions and practice of the Office by Mr. Pospíšil, Martin Nedelka of AK Nedelka Kubáč lawyers than joined the EU practice and Pavel Dejl of Kocián, Šolc and Balaštík contributed reasoning, in which situations the client accept the settlement proposal by the Office.

The third workshop featured by Vice-Chairman Hynek Brom, who spoke on significant market power, especially on the ongoing legislative process for amendment of the Act on significant market power and the changes introduced by the amendment. He underlined the issues of mutual influence of the Act on customers and suppliers, as well as the newly introduced regulation requirements contract and denied that the sanctions imposed by the new regulations could have a liquidation character.

The subsequent panel discussion concerned the competition by the public authorities. In the opening speech, Vice-Chairman Michael Mikulík first mentioned that the provision was in a simplified form and without the possibility of sanctions contained in the first Act on competition law 63/1991. After a prolonged period in the currently valid Act 143/2001 Coll., the Act received the amendment in 2012. "The regulations contained in §19a is in our view too fragmented and needs more precise. Currently, it is at an advanced stage of preparing an amendment to rectify this situation "said Michael Mikulík. The main changes will be the introduction of non-exhaustive list of definitions to better defining the competence of the Office to avoid overlaps in the activities of other public bodies, as well as the express inclusion of the investigative authority of the Office or the possibility of using the settlement procedure.

The situation in the Slovak Republic was briefly summarized by Michael Nosa from the Slovak Competition Authority. The situation seems to be very different in Sweden. As reported by Johan Jonzon from the Swedish Competition Authority, national legislation applies only public bodies and businesses controlled by them, and only when business activities and not in the exercise of public authority. The whole course of erudite panel was moderated by the Chairman of the Lithuanian Competition Authority Šarunas Keserauskas. The final conference program arranged panel on significant market power and was led by First Vice-Chairman Hynek Brom. Barbora Dubanská of CMS Cameron McKenna overviewed legislation of significant market power in Central and Eastern Europe. After that, there was opened discussion by the representatives of retailers and food producers, who mainly presented their differing views on the forthcoming amendment to the Act on significant market power and the existence of the law itself. Marta Nováková of the Czech Chamber  of Commerce and Tourism has highlighted a number of negative impacts of the Act on the Czech economy, especially the expected price increases, a significant reduction in the number of Czech products in retail chains and ultimately negative consequences for the food industry. Miroslav Koberna of the Food Chamber on the contrary pointed the necessity of existence of the law and alleviated the unequal position of suppliers and dealers. An alternative view was provided by Jaroslav Froulík from the Association of the traditional Trade.