EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

Inspection should only apply to those places where evidence can be expected to be found. Therefore, if our model company Waste PLC has several establishments or branches in the territory of several regions and there is a suspicion of bid manipulation of only two of them, the inspection should be carried out only in the two regions concerned and at the headquarters of the company. It often happens today that some activities, such as technical and service support of IT services, are provided to the company by third parties. If there are sufficient indications for such a conclusion, the check should also be carried out here . However, what to do if there is prima facie evidence that the information in question, unlike the competitive conduct, is outside the competence of the competition authority ordering the inspection? There is a possibility to make use of mutual cooperation between competition authorities. Article 24(2) also contributes to achieving this objective. 2. (1) 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 laying down the conditions for mutual assistance for the performance of inspections: “Member States shall ensure that, where national administrative competition authorities carry out inspections or interviews on behalf of and on behalf of other national competition authorities pursuant to Article 22 of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003, officials and other accompanying persons approved or appointed by the applicant national competition authority may, under the supervision of officials of the requested national competition authority: participate in that inspection and actively assist the requested national competition authority during the inspection or interview, where the requested national competition authority exercises the powers referred to in Articles 6, 7 and 9 of this Directive.” (Directive 2019/1) Thus the, not only the possibility to request an inspection in another member state of the EU, but also the possibility of the participation of a representative of a competition authority who orders the inspection of a particular competitor. A similar level of cooperation in control takes place on the basis of cooperation between competition authorities in Europe within the ECN (European Commission, Competition Policy, European Competition Network). For the scope of self-control may perceive the following situations: • securing evidence of a material nature, • securing evidence in digital form. The division of evidence into solid and digital may not be indicated in the inspection mandate, as initially the inspection may not be clear where the information in question is located. As a general rule, competition authorities have a fairly broad power to preserve evidence against competitive conduct. Competition authorities are generally entitled to examine both all books and

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