UOKiK Begins Educational Campaign For Local Municipalities

UOKiK, the Polish competition authority, is starting an educational campaign to reduce the number of competition law violations by local municipalities and their subsidiaries.

In 2011 to date, local municipalities have been the subject of 41 UOKiK decisions and received fines totalling PLN 1.2 million, mainly relating to water supply and sewage services.

In one case, the Boguchwała commune (in the Podkarpackie region) required consumers to bear the cost of building a sewage system while under Polish law recipients of sewage system are only required to incur the cost of building sewage terminal on their own property.

In another, the Mrągowo commune (in the Warmińsko-Mazurskie region) ordered its inhabitants to establish special committees to collect funds to build a sewage network which would then be transferred free of charge to the commune.