Just a month before the beginning of 2018, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) approved methodological recommendations on the assessment of influence of (draft) laws and regulations on competition (Methodological Recommendations) allowing for the elimination or modification of legislation aiming to restrict competition.
The AMC may now establish inconsistencies of regulations currently in force with legislation governing protection of economic competition, and to issue, binding for review, recommendations for the termination of actions or omission to act that may negatively affect competition. In order to draw the AMC's attention to such facts, undertakings may submit applications to the AMC, in response to which the AMC will be obliged to inform the applicant of undertaken measures. The Methodological Recommendations allows for assessment of the probability of measures to be adopted by the AMC if legal gaps are identified.
In the Methodological Recommendations, the AMC has developed criteria revealing, with a certain probability, the weakness of regulatory approaches, within the meaning of legislation governing protection of economic competition. In particular, it is necessary to check whether the regulation reduces the number or narrows the range of suppliers, limits the suppliers' ability to compete, reduces the suppliers' incentive to compete actively, or restricts the choice and access of consumers to the extent of necessary information.
In addition to the criteria specified in the Methodological Recommendations, it is also advisable to check regulation for compliance with the requirements of Article 15 of the Law of Ukraine "On Protection of Economic Competition". In particular, whether such regulation provides benefits or other advantages to particular undertakings or groups of undertakings which place them in a privileged position over their competitors, or forces undertakings to execute preferential arrangements, to conduct priority delivery of goods to a certain group of customers or priority purchase of goods from certain sellers, etc.
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