OREANDA-NEWS. November 11, 2013. The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) and the Competition Development Committee of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Industrialists (RSPP) will form a joint Working Group to discuss in detail the amendments to the antimonopoly law drafted by FAS and approaches to modernization of the current law.

This decision was made on 6th November 2013, by RSPP members and the Head of FAS Igor Artemiev at a meeting of RSPP Committee.

Business expressed their concern about some amendments drafted by FAS, particularly, an idea to publish trading practices at the web-sites of dominant companies and apply the antimonopoly rules to actions and agreements on use of exclusive intellectual property.

The Head of FAS Igor Artemiev explained to entrepreneurs the main amendments on which FAS had been working for over two years.

“The prepared amendments are mostly not our initiative. First, it is part of the amendments devised upon the instructions from the Government of the Russian Federation that were not included in the so-called “third antimonopoly” package because they required additional approvals; second, proposals put forward by business that are formulated in the Road Map for Developing Competition; third, recommendations from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development”, said Igor Artemiev.

“Criticizing us for details, perhaps truly important, business has failed to notice an elephant – the whole package is aimed at liberalizing the antimonopoly law: we abolish post-merger notification procedures, we limit possibilities to form state and municipal unitary enterprises on competitive markets, we formalize in the law that a company with less than 35% market share cannot be recognized dominant. We also propose to stop recognizing actions that do not restrict competition in general but infringe the interest of individual companies as abusing market dominance. We exclude application of antimonopoly norms to competitive bidding by private companies. The amendments exclude a possibility to simultaneously impose a fine and recover unlawfully gained income from the violations, and much more, which ease the life of business and removes excessive administrative barriers”, is convinced Igor Artemiev.

Igor Artemiev pointed out that with adopting the amendments FAS is becoming a body of preventative control rather than a punitive agency.

The Head of FAS commented the proposals put forward by business with regard to publishing trading practices at companies’ web-sites: “The amendments establish the exhaustive list of conditions to be included in a company’s trading practice. They are designed to ensure non-discriminatory access to the goods produced by monopolists. The companies themselves determine the principles of their trading practices and publish them at their web-sites. The main goal of the amendments is to achieve transparency and openness on the issue; FAS is not going to intervene in the process of developing trading practices by companies”.

The amendments to the law are part of the measures under the Road Map for developing competition, which was approved by the Government of Russia.