Serbia: Conditional merger clearance triggers abuse of dominance proceedings

The Serbian Competition Authority has initiated ex officio antitrust proceedings against Serbia Broadband – Srpske kablovske mreže doo Belgrade (SBB) on grounds of suspected abuse of dominance.

In March 2017 the authority conditionally cleared the merger brought about by acquisition of SBB's control over Interaktivne kablovske objedinjene mreže – IKOM doo

The authority had analysed the reports on the fulfilment of conditions set out in its merger clearance decision and discovered that, on 1 January 2018, SBB had increased the monthly cable system maintenance charges by RSD100 (less than €1) to RSD1,395.

As SBB had not provided sufficient evidence to justify the increased monthly charges, the authority sought to determine whether the charges were excessive and thereby exploited service users.

The authority has initiated abuse of dominance proceedings and invited anyone possessing data, documents or other relevant information for determining the facts of the case to submit them to the authority.

This is the first case in which the authority has initiated abuse of dominance proceedings based on soft behavioural remedy (ie, the obligation to report prices).

This article was written by Srdjana Petronijević and first published on www.internationallawoffice.com

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Further reading:
Hungary: Easing administrative burden on companies filing for merger clearance?