Trends

As for the basic trends in the development of competition regulation in Ukraine in 2011-2012 we note the following:

• competition law in Ukraine is becoming more transparent; the AMCU is actively cooperating with competition authorities around the world in an effort to harmonize both the procedural and substantive aspects of the Ukrainian law;
• the AMCU will continue its efforts to modernize Ukrainian competition law, both through a series of amendments and reforms of current legislation, and through the introduction of newly drafted legal instruments. Over the past two years several important amendments were introduced that included a detailed definition of certain characteristics of unfair competition, broader definition of misleading information, established a new procedure for conducting unscheduled on-site inspections, stipulating new alternative means for serving information requests, and tightening criteria for exemption from the standard requirement to provide notification of concerted actions, etc. At present, relevant drafts regarding new increased thresholds, new grounds for dismissing the case on concerted actions and concentrations of business entities, increase in scrutiny and control over competition matters, etc. are being published for public consideration or pending in parliament;
• the AMCU will continue to enforce competition law in priority areas; at present great attention is paid to monopolistic abuses and unfair competition in the energy sector, transport, communications and retail sectors, and the advertising of medicines, baby food, financial services, etc.

RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group

The RULG - Ukrainian Legal Group attorneys have wide-ranging experience advising international companies on major global and regional deals involving antitrust, unfair competition and regulatory issues in Ukraine. To date, we have enjoyed a 100% success rate in obtaining antimonopoly clearances from the AMCU, and often succeed in obtaining clearance ahead of schedule. We were invited by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to conduct training sessions on antitrust and competition compliance issues for Ukrainian judges from all over Ukraine under the UNDP - European Commission Project "Reform of Arbitration Courts and Support to Court Administration". In the course of this work, we prepared Ukraine-focused presentations for annual "Compliance, Law and Ethics Day" antimonopoly compliance training sessions held by a major multinational client. Our firm also conducted interactive Q&A sessions, "Dos and don’ts" exercises, risk assessments, gave practical advice on compliance in dealings with business partners (distributors, customers, etc.) and competitors, and covered liability issues, relations with regulators and many other issues.