EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

The conference paper compares individual approaches of selected Member States – the Czech Republic, Germany, Finland, Netherlands, and Italy – and discusses which Member States introduced the administrative control or the enforcement of the P2B Regulation by courts. 3.1 The Czech Republic The enforcement of the duties arising from the P2B Regulation is currently provided by courts in the Czech Republic and is not specifically regulated. In 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Trade firstly confirmed that the enforcement of the Regulation would be provided by courts, not by the administrative bodies (Ministry of Industry and Trade, 2019). Nevertheless, afterwards it changed that statement and considered a failure to designate a supervisory (administrative) authority as ineffective and slow in the long run (Explanatory memorandum to the proposal, p. 11). This approach is reasonable, considering the fact that the civil proceedings take a considerable amount of time in the Czech Republic, namely 281 days on average in 2020 (Ministry of Justice, 2021, p. 24). On the other hand, the average time to issue an administrative decision is much shorter. For example, the proceedings in the public procurement review agenda took before the Office for the Protection of Competition (Czech Competition Authority) 38,8 days in 2020 as average (The Office for the Protection of Competition, 2021, p. 28). The comparison is only illustrative and made in the public procurement review agenda because the data relating to administrative decisions in the unfair practice agenda were not published. Therefore, the administrative control and the threat of sanctions imposed by the national authority could be in the case of enforcement of the P2B Regulation probably more appropriate and less time-consuming. In 2020 and 2021, the Ministry submitted in the Chamber of the Deputies a proposal of the amendment to the Act No. 480/2004 Sb., on certain information society services. Both proposals established administrative delictual liability of the providers of the online intermediation services or online search engine and set out the administrative control powers to the existing Czech Telecommunications Office. The first proposal was not approved before the end of the term of office of the Chamber of Deputies so a new identical proposal was submitted in December 2021. According to the draft bill, the Czech Telecommunications Office (the CTO) shall hear and enforce administrative delicts that are based on the infringement of obligations under the P2B Regulation (similarly as Italian Communications Authority). Moreover, the draft bill proposed a special informal procedure that should give providers a second chance to rectify an incompliant existing situation in the case of a less serious breach of duties. Based on the call of the Czech

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