New Competition Rules For The Food Sector Enter Into Force On 1 November

After many years of policy debates and legislative activity in Brussels, the food sector will now be covered by new sector-specific rules.

Some of the traditional competition rules on abuse of a dominant position are now also made applicable to non-dominant buyers in the agricultural and food sector. The new rules are set out in the Act (2021:579) on the prohibition of unfair trading practices in the purchase of agricultural and food products, also known as the UTP Act, which transposes an EU Directive into Swedish law.

There are currently a large number of questions on how the Act's provisions will be applied and many companies have reason to consider whether they are affected by the rules, directly or indirectly. A new dedicated unit of the Swedish Competition Authority has been entrusted with the task of enforcing the new Act, and Mannheimer Swartling's EU and competition law group is following the development closely, in dialogue with authorities