Abstract
The paper analyses the legal challenges brought to the Slovak competition law by Directive (EU) 2019/1 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 to empower the competition authorities of the Member States to be more effective enforcers and to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market. The author selected particular issues from Slovak competition law and compares the state-of-the-art national situation with corresponding parts of this harmonising act. In the paper, specific attention will be given to compliance with safeguards, to the regulation of conflict of interest, to the examination of the effectiveness of enforcement, and to the possibilities of undertakings to avoid their responsibility for the breach of competition law. As the Member States have time for the transposition until 4 February 2021, this paper may initiate the debate on what to improve in Slovak legislation to achieve the goals set in this Directive.
Highlights
Functioning competition is one of the tools how to achieve an operational internal market within the European Union
This analysis is not an exhaustive comparison of all aspects of Slovak Competition Law with Directive 2019/1 as, generally, the Slovak system of competition procedure tends to be in line with the practice of the European Commission
The AMO and Slovak courts regularly rely on European case-law and the soft-law instruments of the European Commission even in purely national cases
Summary
As Directive 2019/1 stressed the necessity to fight with the attempts of undertakings to avoid their responsibility for the breaches of competition law by realizing restructuralization operations, this and the effectiveness of enforcement are objects of author’s research, too. Even if the competition enforcement procedure meets all legal requirements, the goal of competition protection might not be met, as the competitor sometimes is able to avoid negative consequences of its behaviour This scenario has already appeared in Slovakia in the recent past and caused a huge public outrage. The author neither analyses other aspects of Directive 2019/1, as they do not appear to be problematic when applying competition law in the Slovak Republic and already comply with current European Competition Law. During the research, the author used scientific methods such as analysis, comparison, deduction, and synthesis
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