OREANDA-NEWS. July 30, 2009. The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation signed the Decree "On Approving General Exceptions for the Buyer-Seller Agreements as Well as the Agreements on Joint Research Projects". The Decree was formulated by FAS Russia as part of enforcement measures for the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

Article 11 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition" prohibits competition-restrictive agreements and concerted actions between economic entities. Under Article 13 of the Law, the Government of the Russian Federation can determine conditions allowing agreements as general exceptions.

"Approving general exceptions for the buyer-seller agreements will clarify the limits for the ban for anticompetitive agreements regarding such type of agreements, and administrative sanctions for breaching the ban", said Igor Artemyev, the Head of FAS Russia.

The Decree specifies details of the conditions for allowing agreements, which will be valid for five years after the normative act is approved.

In particular, the Decree introduces the agreements between buyers and sellers, and the agreements on joint research projects. Unacceptable conditions include, in particular, the conditions restricting the buyer's possibility to independently determine the prices for reselling the goods to other persons; the conditions that provides for refusals to sell the goods on a particular territory or to particular categories of buyers, etc.

The Decree specifies that any conditions of the joint research agreement when the parties' expenses are not related to R&D cannot be allowed.

General exceptions are applicable to the "vertical" agreements and also the agreements between the goods producers and their dealers when the producer is competing with competing with his own dealer.

"Introducing general exceptions will considerably reduces the number of petitions filed to the antimonopoly authority by economic entities on order to obtain an approval of the draft agreement by the antimonopoly authority under Parts 1 - 8 Article 35 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", concluded the Head of FAS Russia.