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ABUSE OF A DOMINANT POSITION: AMO SR initiated an administrative proceedings in the matter of the possible abuse of a dominant position in energy and media production and distribution

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On 21 April 2020 the Antimonopoly Office of the Slovak Republic, the Division of Abuse of a Dominant Position and Vertical Agreements, (hereafter "the Office") initiated, on its own initiative, an administrative proceedings in the matter of the possible abuse of a dominant position according to the provisions of the Article 8 Paragraph 2 Letter a) of the Act on Protection of Competition (hereafter "the Act") and the Article 102 Letter a) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. According to the provision of the Act, the abuse of a dominant position in relevant market is direct or indirect enforcement of excessive prices or other unfair trading conditions.
 
On the basis of the investigation carried out, the Office acquired documentation and information giving rise to a reasonable suspicion that the Act may have been infringed. The infringement of the Act may consist in the conduct of an undertaking, who, in an industrial park, applies such trading conditions for his energy and media customers, due to which these customers must take all the energy and media from the undertaking who produces them, and at the same time, they are denied to produce certain energy or media on their own or to take them from third parties.
 
According to the Article 38 Paragraph 1 of the Act, for infringing the prohibition of abusing dominant position the Office shall impose a fine on the undertaking in the amount of up to 10 % of the turnover according to the Article 3 Paragraph 5 of the Act for previous accounting period.
 
The initiation of the administrative proceedings does not mean that the party to the proceedings infringed competition rules nor does it prejudge conclusions, which the Office may reach in its decision.