On 15 October 2017 the Croatian Competition Agency marked twenty years of its operation by organizing an international conference in Zagreb that was visited by more than a hundred experts, judges, attorneys and representatives of academia and business community who took part in the fruitful discussion about the work of the CCA, judicial review of its decisions and challenges in the future.

There were two panel discussions at the conference. The first focused on the past experience and future challenges facing the CCA in the implementation of competition rules, whereas the second panel discussion concentrated on the functioning of the judicial review.  In spite of scarce financial and limited human capacities for twenty years the Croatian Competition Agency (CCA) has played a central role in the enforcement of competition rules and creation of competition culture in the Croatian society.

Until the end of 2016, that is to say, in the last nineteen years, the CCA solved a total of 7,588 cases, where 2,237 of them were administrative proceedings. It adopted 449 decisions on regulatory provisions and their compliance with competition rules. It has been estimated that the number of cases solved in 2017 would be pretty much the same as in 2016. Thus, we may say that the CCA solved more than 8,000 cases in twenty years. It has done so with less than 50 employees and the budget of less than HRK 10 million that is not flexible and does not encourage any developments.

 In the period from 2012 – 2015, that is to say, in only three years, the CCA imposed HRK 26 million sanctions, some HRK 20 million of which have already been payed to the State Budget. Day after the international conference in the premises of the Agency a workshop was held by Ms. Despina Pachnou from OECD, on the topic of fighting bid rigging. Also, later that day a bilateral meeting occurred in the premises of the Agency with Mr. Ivo Jerkić, president of Competition Council of Bosnia and Hercegovina.

Regulation on the immunity from fines and reduction of fines (Leniency Regulation) was amended with the adoption of Regulation on the Amendements of the Regulation on the immunity from fines and reduction of fines which entered into force on 27 September 2017 (Official Gazette No. 96/2017). First purpose of the amendments of Leniency Regulation is to align completely its legal terminology wih the new Law on Damages Claims for the breach of competition rules which transposes EU Damages Directive 2014/104 in Croatian legislation. This refers primarily to the definition of leniency statement which is now aligned with the Law on Damages Claims for the breach of competition rules.

Secondly, the amendments for the first time introduce summary applications in Croatian Leniency Regulation. The new chapter „Summary applications“ regulates the possibility for the leniency applicant to submit summary applications either for immunity or for reduction of a fine to the Croatian Competition Agency or to other national competition authority which the applicant considers might be ‘well placed” to act in cases when the European Commission is ‘particularly well placed’ to deal with a case relating to the establishment of breach of Article 101. of the TFEU. The amended Leniency Regulation contains also template for the submission of a summary application with all necessary information on the alleged cartel. By those amendments of Leniency Regulation, Croatia is joining the rest of the EU Member States who have in their leniency legislation summary applications. The introduced changes are in line with ECN Leniency Notice and ECN Leniency Model Program.

Regulation on the Amendements of the Regulation on the immunity from fines and reduction of fines in Croatian language can be downloaded here: