FAS and the Corporate Counsel Association are finalizing explanations to the Law “On Protection of Competition”

To exercise the authority on giving explanations regarding antimonopoly enforcement, given to FAS by the “forth antimonopoly law”, the antimonopoly body is now devising the positions on applying Article 10 of the Law “On Protection of Competition”, which will be a logical continuation of the Explanations issued by FAS Presidium at the beginning of the year.

The work is undertaken together with the “Corporate Counsel Association” Non-Profit Partnership. The Working Group is led by the Head of FAS Legal Department, Artem Molchanov, and the President of the Corporate Counsel Association, Alexandra Nesterenko; the work process is supervised by staff members of the Antimonopoly Service, members of the Partnership and renowned experts on antimonopoly law Nikolai Voznesensky, Alexei Kostovarov and Dmitry Seregin.

The projects includes the following issues: 1) abusing the law and abusing dominance; 2) abusing dominance on the same market, which leads to restriction on another market; 3) consequences of abusing dominance - (а) impact upon competition, (b) infringing the interests of economic entities in business activities, (c) infringing the interests of public at large; 4) warning as a preventative measure before making a decision on opening a case; 5) allowability of actions (omissions) of economic entities that have the dominant position, allowability criteria; 6) the balance of Articles 14.31 and 9.21. of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations.

On 22 July 2016, the Working Group discussed the final draft explanations in view of all controversial issues, revealed in the course of work, and comments from structural FAS units.  

Artem Molchanov opened the session of the Working Group, emphasizing the need to discuss the controversial issues of the project and present the final draft for the final discussion. He was supported by Alexandra Nesterenko, who confirmed efficiency of the undertaken efforts corroborated by a rather big volume of the final draft.

Discussions focused on a lot of important practical issues.  Dmitry Seregin answered questions regarding explanations of applying the general prohibition specified in Article 10 of the Law “On Protection of Competition” for abusing dominance. Nikolai Voznesensky and Alexandra Nesterenko discussed the balance of abusing the law and dominance. Heated discussions took place when Nikolai Voznesensky was supporting explanations with regard to adjacent markets.

Due to a large volume of draft explanations and multiple debating points it was decided to continue discussions on 26 July 2016.

“FAS expresses confidence in productivity of joint efforts with the “Corporate Counsel Association” on drafting explanations not only on applying Article 10 of the Law “On Protection of Competition”, but also on other issues of antimonopoly enforcement”, pointed out the Head of FAS Legal Department, Artem Molchanov.