The Section 55 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Slovak Republic stipulates a positive obligation of the State to protect competition. This obligation is imposed on all public authorities, i.e. both the legislator and the bodies applying legal regulations. The public authorities are obliged to provide free access to the market and equality of the rules of conduct of the competitors on the market. When assessing the fulfilment of the legislator´s obligation to ensure equality of the rules of conduct of competitors on the market, the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic has developed an interesting case-law on admissibility of the criteria for distinguishing among competitors. Activities without economic substance are fully excluded from the scope of application of Section 55 paragraph 2 of the Constitution. For some activities with economic substance the obligation to protect competition is limited or excluded by other public interest.
The Article 106 paragraph 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union allows controlling not only the exercise, but also the very existence of special or exclusive rights that the EU Member States grant to some enterprises. The right of the Member States to grant an exclusive right to certain enterprise and thus ensure its dominant position on certain market, which is fundamentally recognised by European law, must not give rise to a situation where the privileged enterprise adopts a conduct constituting the abuse of a dominant position, prohibited by the Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
In this contribution the author discusses legislatively indefinite term of standard practices of competition. In order for a conduct to be qualified as conduct of unfair competition there must be cumulatively fulfilled all features of the general clause of unfair competition as defined in § 44 of the Commercial Code. One of these features is the conflict of such conduct with accepted practises of unfair competition. Commercial Code does not contain legal definition of what standard practices of competition mean. The term of conflict of such conduct with accepted practices of unfair competition evokes in legal doctrine but also in the decisions of courts most interpretative difficulties. However, numerous attempts to define term of standard practices of competition, either in case law or legal doctrine, we consider inappropriate, since this term has its own local, temporal and factual connection. Every judicial decision should in its reasoning quite clearly clarify not only why the judge on the case applied standard practices of competition but it must be evident how the judge evaluates a specific situation in terms of compliance or noncompliance with standard practices of competition.
The author of the present article deals with the business economic environment with links to criminal law unexplored, but due to the area to which it relates, very timely. Leniency program or leniency program in this paper consistently analyze and explained with emphasis on all aspects of the legislation and policies in connection to criminal and commercial law.
The article deals with the settlement institute incompetition law. Settlement enhances effectivness of protection of economic competition by reducing length of proceedings and allows competition authority to use its resources better and also reduce the resources of the parties. The contribution analyses the EU regulation, some examples of national arrangements, particularly the Czech adjustment. Finally, provides insight into the application of this institute in the Slovak conditions and some possible options for the future.
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