Since there is a general intention of Serbian regulator to comply with European regulations in all aspects of the commercial and corporate law, the Law on Protection of Competition is mostly based on the respective Directives of the European Union.
Since the enactment of the new Law and establishment of the Commission for Protection of Competition in 2005, Prica and Partners have been engaged in different procedures before mentioned authority, including obtaining merger and acquisition clearances, obtaining exclusivity clearances, obtaining official opinions regarding necessity of concentration and exclusivity clearances in specific cases, etc. As not all subordinate regulations, which should regulate the procedures in detail, have been enacted yet, we have even contributed to the implementation of practice of the Commission for Protection of Competition.
The Commission is obliged to render a decision upon a request for m/a clearance within 1 month as of the day of submission of the request in a short procedure and within 4 months in a regular procedure. So far, the decisions have mostly been rendered in a short procedure and the Commission has rejected the clearance only once. The most of the projects we handle for our clients require a clearance from the Commission for Protection of Competition. Therefore, we are actively involved in filing a necessary request with the Commission. In that regard, we have successfully completed the filing process and obtained the clearance for, inter alia, Nokia-Siemens and Generali-PPF, in the matter of registration and approval by Commission for Protection of Competition of their global merger. As continuation of on-going cooperation with Backer McKenzie, and having significant expertise in the field of competition, Prica & Partners contributed the Chapter on Serbia to Backer McKenzie Competition Handbook.