What’s New in Western Balkans?

Abstract

Western Balkan jurisdictions (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia (FYROM)) are often outside the focus of the competition community in the EU. This paper aims to rectify that, by providing an overview of the most interesting competition law developments in these jurisdictions during 2017. The overview will show that, despite similarities in their competition legislation, the observed jurisdictions differ when it comes to their priorities in competition law enforcement: while for some the accent is on merger control, for others it is on antitrust. The paper also highlights certain peculiarities of the observed jurisdictions, even though they are all based on the EU model. These include the existence of a notification system with respect to individual exemptions of restrictive agreements in three out of the four observed jurisdictions

Keywords

• western balkans
• eu
• competition law
• individual exemption
• merger control
• antitrust
• restrictive agreements
• abuse of dominance