THE COURT CONFIRMS THE VIOLATION OF THE LAW ON COMPETITION BY THE LITHUANIAN CYNOLOGY SOCIETY

The Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (SACL) passed an unappealable Judgement upholding the conclusions of the Competition Council’s Resolution of 1 April 2010 On the compliance with the requirements of Article 5 of the Law on Competition of the actions of Lithuanian Cynology Society and upheld the decision of the court of first instance.

By the said Resolution the Competition Council recognised that the Lithuanian Cynology Society (LCS) infringed the requirements of Article 5 of the Law on Competition by establishing prohibition to its members to sell puppies with the documents issued by the LCS to natural or legal persons having an objective to resell the puppies.

In the opinion of the Competition Council, the prohibition to sell puppies in stores and by resellers deprives the final buyers of a possibility to compare prices of puppies of different breeds or of the same breed but supplied from different breeders. Being prohibited to supply puppies to stores or other persons (resellers) and allowed to sell puppies only directly (from the breeders), breeders are not interested to compete among themselves in order to get to the stores located in more convenient for buyers places, for instance, in big supermarkets and (or) close to the city centre. Furthermore, absence of the need for the breeders to compete with other economic entities who are able to sell puppies to final consumers, creates the possibility for price increase. The LCS , in disagreement with the Resolution of the Competition Council, appealed the Resolution to the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court, but the Court dismissed the complaint.

The SACL upheld the conclusions of the Competition Council that the LCS restricted freedom of the breeders to act in the market as far as it concerns selling of puppies to stores or other resellers and thus completely eliminated competition between breeders and stores (resellers) as to selling of puppies. The said actions of the LCS deprived the stores and other resellers of a possibility to purchase puppies holding the certificates of origin issued by the LCS, and thus eliminated competitors from the relevant market.

The SACL also upheld the position of the Competition Council that such decision of the LCS by which natural and/or legal persons (the competitors of the LCS members) are eliminated from the market, is considered as a prohibited agreement having the purpose of restricting competition.

It should be reminded that, in 2010, for this infringement of the Law on Competition the LCS was fined LTL 32 300.