EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

Prague, Czechia

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

being interrupted ensure that the administrative offence can be punished when the OPC dully performs its duties under the APC and shows real willingness to prosecute the infringement. This means that when both aspects of the limitation period are placed on the virtual scale those two aspects balance out. Moreover, we have to take into account that the limitation period gets interrupted at the beginning of the respective proceedings by the notification of the initiation of the proceedings regarding the administrative offence. This means, that after the initiation of each proceedings the limitation period of 10 years starts running afresh and can be according to Article 23(6) APC a maximum 14 years in total (not including possible suspension of the limitation period). This on the other hand means that should the basic limitation period be prolonged even further it would start to incline toward the effective and efficient application of competition law such heavily that it would be almost impossible to balance out by the other aspects of the limitation period. Prolonging the limitation period while keeping multiple opportunities (including the notification of the initiation of the proceedings regarding the administrative offence) to interrupt it or keeping this length of the limitation period and increasing the number of acts that interrupt it (or defining those acts using a non-exhaustive list) could, for example, result in the OPC negligently failing to prosecute administrative offences for prolonged time periods as it would be certain it could do so later (e.g., after many years). This could, in turn, lead to overall lower efficiency and effectiveness of the application of competition law as with the greater amount of time that passed from the instance the administrative offence was committed e.g., the availability, quality, and quantity of evidence start to decline rapidly. The authors are thus convinced that prolongation of the limitation period or broadening the possibilities for its interruption would only have a significant negative impact on the legal certainty and on ensuring that cases are dealt with within a reasonable time. As far as the suspension of the limitation period is concerned Section 23(3) APC states that the limitation period is suspended for the duration of proceedings conducted in connection with an offence before an administrative court. This is very similar to the legislation contained in Regulation 1/2003 according to which the limitation period shall be suspended “for as long as the decision of the Commission is the subject of proceedings pending before the Court of Justice” (see Article 25(6) 0f Regulation 1/2003). From a material point of view, it could be argued that Czech and EU legislation regarding the suspension of the limitation period is identical. That is because the CJEU is the review body in regard to decisions on the fines and penalties issued by the Commission and Czech administrative courts are inter alia the review body in regard to decisions on the fines and penalties issued by the OPC. The authors concluded that legislation that provides only one reason for the suspension of the limitation

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