Amendments To The Croatian Competition Act

Amendments to the Croatian Competition Act (the "Act") entered into force on 24 April 2021. One of the main goals of the Act was to transpose Directive (EU) 2019/1 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 to make the competition authorities of the Member States more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market (the "ECN+ Directive") into Croatian law. Apart from transposing the ECN+ Directive, the legislator used the opportunity to harmonise certain other provisions of the Act which were not fully in line with the Community rules.

 (i) ECN+ Directive implementation

• the Act aims to ensure the institutional, financial and operative independence of the Croatian Competition Authority (the "CCA") by enabling the CCA, inter alia,  (i) to exercise its competence free of any external intervention or influence which may affect its independent assessment of matters, (ii) to independently spend budget