In this post, I will provide a brief overview of the main 2023 competition law and policy developments in five Western Balkan countries: Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Albania. What connects these jurisdictions is that they are all outside the EU and are at the same time heavily influenced by EU law…
This post will present the main competition law developments in 2022 in four Western Balkan jurisdictions – Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. Despite peculiarities in the competition policy of each of the four jurisdictions and their respective national competition authority (NCA), they deserve to be addressed together due to their common background…
In the last couple of months alone, the Serbian national competition authority (NCA) has started as many as three new gun-jumping investigations. The investigations relate to transactions which parties failed to notify in Serbia even though the Serbian merger filing thresholds were apparently exceeded. On surface, this may indicate an increased risk for parties who…
This post aims to present the main competition law developments in four Western Balkan jurisdictions – Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. Rather than being an exhaustive review of everything that happened in 2021, the post will focus on what really mattered in these jurisdictions during the previous year. A) The four…
In light of the European Commission’s recent gun-jumping investigation concerning Illumina’s acquisition of GRAIL, what has been the gun-jumping track record of the Serbian competition authority and what to expect in the future? What is the potential fine for gun-jumping in Serbia? The Serbian Competition Act prescribes a standstill obligation, providing that the parties…
The Montenegrin national competition authority (NCA) has published its track record in pursuing gun-jumping violations in the last three years – and the number of violations detected by the authority is surprisingly high. What do Montenegrin merger control rules say about gun-jumping? Aside from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro is another Western Balkan…
Amidst a never-ending stream of news related to COVID-19, it went somewhat under the radar that another European flag carrier airline has been grounded – Montenegro Airlines. The halt of operations of the airline up came as a result of the inability of the government to further subsidize the loss-making carrier, due to state aid…
What were competition law developments in Serbia during 2020 worth mentioning and what to keep an eye on 2021? Merger control Merger notification thresholds remain unchanged A well-known trait of Serbia’s merger control regime is extremely low merger filing thresholds – they are so low, in fact, that around a half of all merger notifications in…
