MAndrey Shastitko, Aug 30, 2011
A new stage in the development of the Russian antitrust policy began in 2006, due to the development and adoption of the package of laws aimed to harmonize Russian antitrust legislation with European practices. This adoption changed not only the design of the antitrust legislation, but also its role in the development of the business institutional environment in Russia. The norm of collective dominance, defined in the Part 3 of the Article 5 of the Law on Protection of Competition, became one of the most important innovations of the this Law. By the time the new Law was passed, the EU had accumulated valuable experience in the application of the concept of the collective dominance, though a special norm listing all the necessary qualifying signs of the collective dominance has never existed. This article asks: Are there grounds to believe that Russian law enforcement follows European practices by borrowing the European norm of collective dominance, and adapting it in Russia to deal with its emerging market economy?
To analyze the issue we will examine the features of the legal structure of the collective dominance concept in Russian law and identify possible options of the concept’s application from the key dimensions of the antitrust policy perspective. We will also show by examples what is the specific Russian feature that takes into account the EU experience.
