Montenegro To Adopt Bylaws To Complement Competition Act

The new Competition Act (Official Gazette 44/12) came into force on October 8 2012. The act, among other things, stipulates that the enforcement of competition rules will be within the competencies of the Agency for Protection of Competition, which was formally registered on February 18 2013. In essence, the agency corresponds to the Directorate for the Protection of Competition, which has enforced competition law thus far. The change represents a harmonisation with Montenegrin administrative law rules. The agency took over the directorate's assets, documentation and staff, and continued work on previous directorate cases without interruption .

In order to complement the act, new bylaws are planned to be adopted in the first half of 2013, most of which pertain the block exemption of various agreements, including:

• the Regulation on the Conditions, Procedure and Criteria of Block Exemption of Agreements;
• the Regulation on the Conditions of Block Exemption of Insurance Agreements;
• the Regulation on the Conditions of Block Exemption on Distribution and Motor Vehicle Servicing Agreements;
• the Regulation on Block Exemptions in the Transport Sector;
• the Regulation on Block Exemption of Technology Transfer Agreements;
• the Regulation on Block Exemption of Horizontal Cooperation Agreements;
• the Guidelines on the Form and Content of Merger Control Notifications;
• the Guidelines on the Criteria and Method of Defining the Relevant Market; and
• the Guidelines on the Contents and Manner of Submitting Individual Exemption Requests.

In addition, a tariff code specifying various fees to be charged by the agency is to be adopted, which is a significant novelty, as no fees have been charged by the agency or directorate to date.

Originally published on International Law Office

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