OREANDA-NEWS. November 21, 2011. The State Duma of the Russian Federation (the lower house) passed in the second reading the “third antimonopoly package” of amendments. The draft law is prepared by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia), reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

On 9th September 2011, the State Duma of the Russian Federation approved the “third antimonopoly package” in the first reading.

The draft law introduced amendments to the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” and some other legislative acts of the Russian Federation based on law enforcement practice.

In particular, the amendments reduce the list of per se violations that are only applicable to horizontal agreements (cartels). Criminal liability for anticompetitive agrements is clarified. The draft law clarifies the concept of prohibited coordination of economic activities.

The antimonopoly authority proposes to clarify the requirements to concerted actions between economic entities. Actions of economic entities that publicly announced plans of market conduct will be recognised as concerted actions. Also the amendments introduce the minimum market share that economic entities engaged in concerted actions must have.

The “third antimonopoly package” introduces fixed administrative fines for violations with abusing market dominance that have not resulted in restricting competition. However, this rule will not be applicable to actions of the holders of natural monopolies, to which “turnover fines” must be applied.

The amendments also correct Article 6 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”. For instance, the price formed through exchange provided that the exchange trading rules are observed will not be recognised as a monopolistically high price. FAS intends to improve its practice of applying the retrospective method to determine monopolistically high price and will also use global price indexes.

The draft law allows the Government of the Russian Federation to determine the Rules for non-discriminatory access to the infrastructure facilities of natural monopolies, as well as to the goods that are technologically connected to them.

Notifications of agreements between financial organisations are no longer necessary.

The amendments proposed by FAS will also formalize the mechanism of administrative disputes of tenders that must be carried out under the law of the Russian Federation.

The procedures for providing state and municipal property are clarified. In particular, it is no longer required to organise tenders to conclude property sub-lease contracts by the persons who received such property through tenders.

The amendments also provide for consideration of mitigating and aggravating circumstances of legal entities for violating the antimonopoly law.

“The “third antimonopoly package” of amendments is an important stage of development of the antimonopoly law because its provisions remove the current problems of applying the main institutes of the antimonopoly regulation. It will enable to introduce progressive models of antimonopoly regulation used by the leading market economies in the enforcement system in Russia”, said the Head of FAS Legal Department, Sergey Puzyrevskiy.