PRE-TRIAL TARIFF DISPUTE SETTLEMENT LEADS TO PROMPT DECISIONS
Significant advantages of pre-trial settlement include Commission’s professionalism and decision-making in view of social-and-economic factors
Judicial and administrative practice on tariff disputes in 2018 was in the focus of the discussion at the “Enforcement in Tariff Regulation” session in the course of the Round Table on the “Pressing enforcement issues of antimonopoly and tariff regulation”.
Head of FAS Department for Regional Tariff Regulation, Yulia Yudina, described several most important FAS cases that have “transformed the tariff landscape”. These cases helped FAS to shape integrated, practice-oriented approaches to counting some costs items as part of regulated prices (tariffs). Special attention was paid to FAS approaches to accounting “depreciation” in the required gross revenue of the regulated entities. This issue causes a lot of interests from the participants.
Yulia Yudina informed about pre-trial settlement in the field of public regulation of prices (tariffs) by the competition authority*.
It should be noted that FAS pre-trial settlement procedure has a number of essential advantages such as immediate consideration, collegiality of decision-making and taking into account social-and-economic factors. FAS has broad responsibilities for comprehensive consideration of pre-trial disputes and protection of infringed rights. An important specific of the pre-trial procedure is that the work of the competition authority does not stop with making a decision. FAS controls execution of all its decisions and orders, and in case of a failure to do so hold the violators liable in accord with the established procedure.
“At the same time during consideration we can look not only in the violations listed in a statement, but expose other violations upon our own initiative. We can go beyond the dispute subject, and this practice is supported by Courts”, underlined Yulia Yudina.
At the end of the Round Table there was a practice–oriented game for “Considering unfair competition dispute” carried out by Deputy Head of FAS Legal Department Larisa Vovkivskaya.
Reference:
*Settlement of such disputes is currently regulated by No.553 Government Decree and No.827/18 FAS Order. Earlier the process was regulated by 16 Governmental acts.
* No.533 Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation “On approving the Rules for considering (settlement) of disputes and disagreements with setting and (or) applying prices (tariffs) of 30.04.2018
** No. 827/18 FAS Order “On approving FAS Regulations for considering (settlement) of disputes and disagreements” of 19.06.2018
The Round Table on the “Pressing enforcement issues of antimonopoly and tariff regulation” was organized by the Antimonopoly Experts Association and FAS during Petersburg International Legal Forum – 2019. Representatives of the competition authority, the Supreme Court and legal practitioners took part in the event.