Competition Commission Imposes Retrospective Fines

Before the existing Law on the Protection of Competition entered into force at the end of 2009, Serbian competition law had a serious flaw: the Competition Commission was unable to issue fines directly, but had to apply to the courts to impose fines on undertakings that had breached competition rules. These court proceedings often led to severe infringements escaping punishment, because the relevant infringements were time-barred by the time the court dealt with them. Now that the commission has the power to impose fines directly, it has been exercising this power.

Mlekara and Imlek case

In 2008 the commission ruled that Mlekara ad and Imlek ad – which were both controlled by Danube Foods Group BV – had abused their dominant position on the market for purchasing milk in Serbia by imposing unreasonable business conditions and by applying dissimilar conditions to identical transactions. The commission found that contracts concluded with raw milk producers obliged