On March 7, 2017, the Polish Court of Competition and Consumer Protection, the (“CCCP“), issued an important judgment regarding the powers of the Polish Competition Authority, the (“PCA“), to search IT systems and hardware (e-mails and hard disks) during dawn raids (the Order of the CCCP of 7 March 2017, XVII Amz 15/17). This judgment…
Rzeczpospolita daily reported that UOKiK (Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection) is set to issue an important decision concerning a complaint against the online platform Allegro. Some sellers who are Allegro users complained to UOKiK that Allegro discriminated against smaller or independent sellers. Allegro is an e-commerce and auctioning on-line platform, with headquarters in…
Let me get this straight from the beginning. I am not a big fan of the trend among the competition authorities to introduce whistleblowing programs. For me this seems to be rather a sign of weakness and not of strength. If other available tools (and especially the leniency program) worked well there would probably be…
The Act on Combating Unfair Use of Contractual Advantage in Trading in Agricultural and Food Products (the “Act”) will enter into force in the mid-2017. The objective of the Act is to eliminate unfair trade practices between purchasers and producers (suppliers) of agricultural food products at every stage of the supply chain. The new legislation…
On 30 September 2015, the Act on Control of Certain Investments (the “Act”) enters into force. The Act aims to create mechanisms to protect against hostile takeovers of companies operating in key sectors of Polish economy. According to the Act, prior to the acquisition of shares of strategic companies (including the acquisition of proprietary interests…
The Polish Competition Authority, which is the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (the “PCA”), has announced that, starting from 1 September 2015, it will be issuing statements of objections to undertakings and will set up an internal evaluation committee. These new tools are, in PCA’s own words, designed to “strengthen procedural…
The recent practice of the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (the “OCCP”) shows that conditional clearance decisions are becoming more common. In 2014, the OCCP issued four conditional merger decisions, which is more than the total number of conditional decisions issued in 2012 and 2013. In this post we will discuss…
The Polish competition authority (Prezes Urzędu Ochrony Konkurencji i Konsumentów, “PCA”) has recently addressed the issue of resale price maintenance clauses (“RPM”) (see PCA decision of 31 December 2012 in case no. DOK 9/2012). The matter merits some attention, what with interesting argumentation raised in defence of the challenged clause related to a launch of…
