Getting the Deal Through: Dominance 2008

The abusive behaviour of dominant firms is prohibited by article 6 of the Romanian Competition Law No. 21/1996 (RCL) and, since 1 January 2007, by article 82 of the EC Treaty. Article 6 expressly forbids the abusive use of a dominant position held by one or more undertakings on the Romanian market or on a substantial part of it, by resorting to anti-competitive practices that have as their object or may have as their effect the distortion of economic activities or the prejudice of consumers.

These anti-competitive practices may refer to:

• directly or indirectly imposing unfair selling or purchase prices, tariffs or other unfair trading conditions and the refusal to deal with specific suppliers or beneficiaries;
• limiting production, distribution or technical development to the prejudice of the users or the consumers;
• applying dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties thereby placing them at a competitive disadvantage;
• making the conclusion of contracts subject to acceptance by the other parties of supplementary obligations which neither by their nature nor according to commercial usage, have any connection with the subject of such contracts;
• using excessive or predatory prices for the purpose to exclude the competitors or selling to export below the production cost by covering the differences through imposing higher prices to internal consumers; or
• exploiting the economic dependence of an undertaking, which does not have an alternative solution under equivalent conditions and terminating the contractual relations for the sole reason that the partner refuses to obey to unjustified trade conditions.

To read the entire article, please download the .pdf attached.