Romania ∙ More on Regulation, Market Screening, Antitrust Enforcement and Future Policy Contributions

• Published in: CoRe : European competition and regulatory law review Vol. 4; no. 4; pp. 309 - 313
• Main Authors: Marius Chirițoiu, B., Dan Roman, V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH 2020
• Subjects: Antitrust; Bans; Competition; Councils; Foreign investment; Law; Legislation; Regulation; Scandals; Transparency; Romania
• ISSN: 2510-3148; 2510-3148
• DOI: 10.21552/core/2020/4/10

According to the draft law, undertakings with a superior negotiation position will fall within the scope of the newly proposed provisions if, for example, they unjustifiably refuse to provide or purchase products, or if they fail to comply with the agreed payment conditions. For an undertaking to be considered as being in this position, three cumulative criteria would need to be documented: (i) the existence of an unbalanced business relationship, eg given the market power benefiting one of the undertakings; (ii) the importance of the commercial relation for the running of the other undertaking's business; (iii) the difficulty in finding or the inexistence of an equivalent alternative. By having the RCC appointed to enforce this first piece of legislation to ever tackle online business-to-business relations, the Regulation will benefit from the Authority’s extensive investigative experience, with a view to complementing existing antitrust and unfair trading practices rules. [...]this also allows for the possibility that the Authority uses the collected evidence in launching ex-officio antitrust procedures.