EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

effects on market competition. Competition law is aimed to obtain acceptable level and balance of companies’ freedom and customer and public interests protection to eliminate generating some unjustified level of profit or extra profit. In some situations extraordinary profit is acceptable for companies if their profit is based on companies’ innovativeness and operational efficiency, but even in that circumstances competition enforcement authority have an obligation to effectively enforce competition law. Effectiveness of competition law enforcement is a prerequisite for the effectiveness of competition policy. The efficiency of the application of competition law and thus of competition policy depends on several “direct” and “indirect” determinants. Direct factors of efficiency would be related to the efficiency of the antitrust authority. The efficiency of the work of the antitrust agency is determined by its size, quality, and education of employees, especially those who act in competitive cases, equipment and technology, or the budget available to the body. Without a doubt there is a positive correlation between resources and effective enforcement across public enforcement agencies (McNutt, 2000, p. 40). Indirect determinants refer to relations competition law and policy with macroeconomic indicators. The paper will deal with the impact of certain macroeconomic indicators on the effectiveness of competition law and policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in transition and development that does not inherit a long culture of competition and on the way to membership in the European Union encounters many obstacles, including those related to ensuring effective protection of market competition. The area of market competition in post-Dayton BiH was an unknown thing, considering the fact that there was no tradition in terms of market competition, as well as no legal and regulatory framework in this field. Without technical, professional, and material support from EU institutions, the transposition of rules and standards in the area of competition in BiH could not have been initiated. The EU demands from EU membership candidate countries to harmonise the area of competition well before accepting them in its membership. Generally, a candidate country is obligated to create all necessary conditions for the functioning of legal and institutional framework that would be identical to the one in the EU at the moment of admission to the EU. However, in BiH, the process concerning the introduction of modern competition law and its enforcement, meaning adaptation to the legal acquis, is conditioned by the complicated state and legal arrangement and represents a field of political determinism (Imamović-Čizmić and Sabljica, 2020, p. 58). Namely, the election of members of the Council of Competition of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the manner of decision-making in the Council of Competition is conditioned by national principles. This means that representatives of the constituent peoples must be represented in the composition of this competition authority

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