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Jiří Kindl spoke at the St. Martin’s Conference of the Office for the Protection of Competition dealing with the issue of punishing vertical agreements

Jiří Kindl, partner of Skils, spoke at the traditional St. Martin’s Conference organized by the Office for the Protection of Competition.

As part of the panel on the issue of vertical (or distribution) agreements, Jiří Kindl focused mainly on the current trends in the field of punishment of vertical agreements by the Office for the Protection of Competition, in particular on the so-called resale price maintenance agreements (RPM). In his presentation, Jiří, among others, expressed a critical opinion that the number of cases of such agreements constitutes too large a share of the total number of anti-competitive agreements investigated by the Office, and that the penalties imposed for vertical agreements are excessively high – in a situation where this is not the most serious conduct that the Office deals with or should deal with. This applies especially in cases where the Office investigates and imposes significant penalties on small and medium-sized enterprises or companies with low market shares. On the contrary, Jiří was quite positive about the trends in the valuation of the cooperation of the surveyed competitors, including the possibility of taking into account the implementation or strengthening of compliance programs.

Photo: The Office for the Protection of Competition