On November 12, 2015 the Ukrainian parliament adopted three anticipated draft laws in the field of antitrust regulation: (a) Draft Law No. 2431 on the introduction of compulsory fine assessing methodology to be applied by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the “AMC”), (b) Draft Law No. 2168a on the anticipated merger clearance thresholds increase, and (c) Draft Law No. 2102 on increase in the transparency of the AMC’s activities.
While the first two draft laws have not left the halls of the parliament and are being prepared for the second reading, the third draft law has been fully adopted and now is to be presented to the President for signing (the “Law”).
The Law provides for the two major novelties:
- AMC is required to publish all its decisions, excluding the restricted information, within ten (10) business days after the adoption of such decisions; and
- Companies are required to justify the confidentiality of any information they submit to the AMC as the restricted information.
Since recently, the AMC publishes the extracts from its decisions, however, in quite a limited scope, as the companies extend the restricted regime upon almost all the information they submit to the AMC. Moreover, such extracts are not always published on a timely basis. The legislative novelties are intended to secure the timely and more complete publishing of the AMC’s decisions.
We share a positive view of the Law and its novelties. Now, the companies may freely access the latest AMC’s practice and predict its behavior in different cases. Likewise, the AMC’s practice may be referred to by the companies during the consideration or challenging the antitrust cases. On the other hand, companies will have to be more careful while justifying the confidentiality of the information submitted to the AMC to eliminate its disclosure.
The Law will come into force in three months after its publishing. There is no room for doubts on whether the President will sign the Law, since its effectuating will fulfill one of the EU Association Agreement requirements. Therefore, we already advise our antitrust clients to take into consideration the opportunities and challenges introduced by the Law, today.