The Anticompetitive Concerted Actions Design in Russian Antimonopoly Legislation: Theoretical Aspects and Practice of Applying the Rules

Abstract

The Russian antimonopoly legislation establishes prohibitions in relation to various types of anticompetitive behavior of economic entities, including concerted actions that the legislator considers as a separate violation of antimonopoly legislation. Despite the existence and application of norms regarding the prohibition of concerted actions, there is no unity among scholars and practitioners in understanding both the very need for a prohibition of concerted actions in the legislation, and the essential features of this offense. Serious theoretical and practical problems also arise in the delimitation of concerted actions and another kind of anticompetitive behavior, namely: agreements that restrict competition. The paper concludes that the literal meaning of the term “concerted actions” does not correspond to the content of the normative regulation of this prohibited behavior, since concerted actions as a legal category represents a part of the more general concept of “agreement." There is also a lack of uniformity in differentiating competition-restricting agreements and concerted actions. The author argues that it is necessary to correct the name of such an offense as concerted actions and some of its signs, while generally maintaining the corresponding prohibition in the antimonopoly legislation.