Amendments To The Competition Act

Introduction

At the beginning of July 2013, the Republic of Croatia acceded to the European Union and thereby completed its two-decade long endeavours to attain EU Membership. From the very onset of these endeavours, competition law has undergone constant transformation and alignment with EU rules. Nevertheless, certain provisions of the Croatian competition law regime that deviated from EU rules or would have hindered their full implementation remained in place until shortly before EU accession. Amendments to the Competition Act ("Act") in July did away with these peculiarities.

The amendments essentially refer to three categories of legal rules: one category refers to further harmonizing Croatian rules with the EU Merger Control Regulation Council Regulation (EC) No. 139/2004. A second set of amendments aim at harmonizing Croatian provisions with Council Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003. The third category refers to modifications of the existing procedural solutions.