AZTN Announces Priorities for 2024, Plans to Strengthen the Role of Whistleblowers in Cartels

The Agency for the Protection of Market Competition (AZTN) has announced its priorities for 2024, in which it will strive to continue uncovering and sanctioning serious violations of market competition law, as well as to strengthen the role of whistleblowers in the proceedings it conducts. The published document emphasizes the detection of prohibited horizontal agreements (so-called cartels) and their suppression in public procurement, as well as the detection of prohibited vertical agreements and abuses of dominant positions.

At AZTN, led by Mirta Kapural, the Chairwoman of the Council for the Protection of Market Competition, they emphasize that they aim to achieve effective and economical use of resources in handling received initiatives and other submissions, but also to dismiss initiatives if their content is not a priority for implementation. In addition to the sufficiency of its resources, the Agency also aims to positively influence the market through its actions, and the purpose of all this is also to provide companies with an alternative to AZTN’s actions.

– In order to further achieve this mission and its goals and the legal powers of AZTN to set priorities in its work, even when it receives an initiative to initiate proceedings ex officio, while resolving ongoing cases in its work in 2024, we will focus on priorities – they say at AZTN.

One of these priorities is engagement related to prohibited horizontal agreements. These are cartels, and the Agency reminds that these are the most serious violations of market competition, regardless of the market share of the participants in the agreement. These violations are defined in the Competition Protection Act (Article 8, Paragraph 1), and relate to price fixing, limiting or controlling production, markets, technological development or investments, and market or source allocation. The application of unequal conditions on similar transactions with different entrepreneurs is also prohibited, as well as conditioning the conclusion of contracts by accepting additional obligations from other contracting parties that are not related to the subject of those contracts by their nature or trade customs.

Such cartel agreements among competing entrepreneurs, where they agree on prices or other parameters of market competition, which would be lower under competitive behavior of entrepreneurs, are unacceptable for consumers. Prices usually rise by 15 – 30 percent, in some cases up to 50 percent, as established in various international studies investigating the negative impact of cartels on prices, and such cartel behavior is the primary focus of AZTN.

– Although several cartels have been uncovered in recent periods in various relevant markets (driving schools, bus transport, utility services, food delivery for public kitchens), there are several ongoing cartel cases that will be a priority for resolution this year – they report from AZTN. Furthermore, it is emphasized in this document that there are certainly still a number of cartels in practice in the Croatian market that need to be uncovered and proven in the conducted proceedings. To achieve this, it is necessary to strengthen the existing resources and tools of AZTN, as well as to introduce some new ones.