News date: 26 April 2024
Oleksandr Fefelov, Partner, Head of Antitrust & Competition at Ilyashev & Partners, moderated the Promotion of the Competitive Environment Session at the IX Ukrainian Antitrust Forum held on 24 April 2024 in Kyiv.
Following the adoption of Law No. 3295, the representatives of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and well-known experts on competition protection discussed the reform of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and the development of legislation on the protection of economic competition.
Oleksandr emphasized that market players highly appreciated the Law on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Regarding Improvement of the Legislation on Protection of Economic Competition and the Activities of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU). It became important since it indicated the first stage of the antitrust reform. Among other things, it is important to change approaches to conducting inspections of business entities and consideration of applications and cases. At the same time, some of the provisions of the law shall be completed and executed, namely the procedure for notifying the AMCU on participation in anticompetitive actions (leniency).
During the discussion, experts also considered the issue of obtaining AMCU merger clearances.
“Recently, the process of obtaining merger clearances has become more complicated to some extent and requires more time and effort from the involved participants. Speaking of the privatization process, the time frame for obtaining clearances from AMСU significantly delayed the transfer of control over non-operating or declining companies, quite often for several months. Investors were unable to start working at such enterprises due to such delay, thereby there was not a possibility to attract funds to the state budget faster,” – Oleksandr Fefelov noted.
The session participants also discussed further steps in the implementation of the reform regarding the protection of economic competition, amendments to leniency and settlement procedures, limitation periods for AMCU’s inspections and investigations, assessment of penalties for violation of legislation, peculiarities and differences of the competitive environment in Ukraine and other countries. They also examined the case studies on the impact of privatization on competition.
Ukrainian Antitrust Forum is organized by Yurydychna Praktyka Publishing House. The Forum is attended by the representatives of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, the judges, lawyers of the leading law firms, top managers and legal advisers of numerous companies.