Decisions issued by the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection regarding the imposition of penalty payments on entrepreneurs as a repressive sanction

Abstract

Aim:The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the nature of decisions issued by the President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection regarding the imposition of penalty payments on entrepreneurs for infringements of the Protection of Competition and Consumers Act of February 26, 2007, which is one of the indications of restrictions on economic freedom. Special attention has been paid to the criteria applied by the President of the OCCP for imposing penalty payments while indicating the changes introduced by amendments to the Act  which came into force on January 18, 2015. Design / Research methods:Legal historical method, systematic and teleological interpretation, comparative law Conclusions / findings:Both the rules and the criteria required to be applied by the President of the OCCP when inflicting punishment are included in a catalogue of directives in Article 111 of CCPA. In the catalogue, the legislator attaches particular importance to the premise consisting in a breach of provisions of the law and a previous breach of the same legal act while other elements, separate for each type of breach, are specified later on, imposing on the President of the OCCP the obligation to consider both attenuating circumstances and aggravating circumstances when deciding on the degree (amount) of the penalty. Irrespective of the above, due to the open catalogue of circumstances affecting the gravity of the penalty, the President of the OCCP may also consider some circumstances indirectly implied in the act and developed by the judiciary decisions, which include the type of non-compliance or breach, the degree of violating the public interest, intentional or unintentional action orduration of the breach. Originality / value of the article:To signal criteria changes applied by the President of the OCCP for imposing penalty payments while indicating the changes introduced by amendments to the Act, which came into force on 18 January 2015.