LITHUANIAN COMPETITION AUTHORITY HOLDS HIGH POSITIONS AMONG WORLD’S COMPETITION AUTHORITIES

The competition law journal and news service Global Competition Review, which conducts an annual ranking of the world‘s competition authorities, gave the Lithuanian competition authority Konkurencijos taryba three stars of five for eight years in a row. Competition authorities from Belgium, Latvia, Poland, Switzerland and some other countries were ranked in the same position.

When evaluating the last year activities of Konkurencijos taryba, experts of the Global Competition Review analysed the authority’s achievements in the field of merger control, cartel agreements, reviewed court rulings concerning the decisions adopted by Konkurencijos taryba, as well as analysed its remarks on draft legislation, conducted market studies, actions in the field of competition advocacy. As part of their assessment, experts also interviewed Lithuanian competition practitioners.

In the conclusions the Global Competition Review noted that despite relatively modest human resources, Konkurencijos taryba is well respected by local lawyers, who praise its institutional independence, ambition and merger control analysis, but hold expectations about faster investigations progress. However, foreign experts acknowledged that the latter criticism, which is common in most jurisdictions, is not necessarily justified, since cartel probes spanned just over 20 months on average and a typical in-depth merger review lasted four months.

In 2021 Konkurencijos taryba identified 4 competition law infringements, imposed fines totalling EUR 13,063,680 on infringers, cleared 19 mergers, one of them subject to commitments, examined 410 draft legal acts and notified to the European Commission 27 state aid schemes.