April 2024 – A so-called Procedure for Determining the Amount of Fines Imposed for the Violation of Laws on the Protection of Economic Competition (the "Procedure") issued by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine ("AMC") in 2023, and binding since 21 February 2024, has come into force in Ukraine.
The Procedure replaces the earlier AMC Recommendations on the Calculation of Fines for the Violation of Ukrainian Competition Laws. The Procedure allows the AMC to impose significantly higher fines for competition law violations in Ukraine (the percentage imposed may range from 15% to 30% of the revenue on the relevant market depending on the given violation and circumstances). Indeed, we anticipate that the Ukrainian authority will now get tougher in terms of fines for competition law violations.
Legal analysts view this as an important step in Ukrainian competition law reform that ensures greater legal certainty and transparency, affecting the method of calculation of fines by the AMC, as well as defendants' abilities to successfully challenge decisions issued by the AMC that have been found to be non-compliant with applicable procedures in Ukrainian courts. In recent years AMC practice saw a number of cases when the authority imposed severe fines on companies without giving any meaningful explanation regarding its approaches to the fining process. For example, in 2023 the AMC imposed several record-breaking fines of approximately EUR 648,000 for gun-jumping in merger cases both with and without competition concerns in Ukraine.
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