At the public hearing on the Draft Law on Protection of Competition, the Chamber of Doing Business in Kosovo has requested the shortening of the deadlines for responding to the initiation of the investigative procedure in the Kosovo Competition Authority (KCA).
The Chairman of the Working Group in the Committee on Economy, MP Armend Muja said that this draft law addresses all possible forms of misuse and abuse of businesses in the market.
However, Diellza Zeqiri, representative of the Chamber of Doing Business in Kosovo, has requested the amendment of Article 36, respectively paragraph 6 of this draft law, to shorten the deadlines for addressing the initiation of investigative procedures from ten months to three months.
“If you initiate a procedure with the Kosovo Competition Authority, it is a very long period, it takes 10 months to receive a conclusion that there are no conditions to start the procedure. We think that it is a long period of time, we have had concrete cases, where, as the Chamber of Doing Business we have presented the cases at the beginning of the year to the Kosovo Competition Authority, whereas, until the end of the year we have not received the required response. After this long period, we have received a response from the KCA that there are no conditions to continue the procedure. It really is a very long time”, said Zeqiri.
Muja said that this request of the CDBK should be harmonized with the administrative law.
“The EU has also recommended us to harmonize all laws with administrative law. Let’s harmonize this and when there is a lack of capacity, we ask the state to increase capacity. So, we unify this as well, and I would suggest the administration of the Assembly at this point to be unified with the administrative law”, said Muja.
Meanwhile, officials of the Ministry of Industry, Entrepreneurship and Trade have said that the purpose of this draft law is to protect competition in the market. Rexhep Bllaca from MIET, said that the substantial novelty of this draft law is the treatment of abuse with a dominant position.
“As a substantial novelty of this draft law is the abuse with a dominant position. The dominant position is held by the company, which has a market share of 40%. Whereas if there are two or more companies operating jointly in the market in an interconnected manner, the market share should be 60 percent. This is in full compliance with the EU Regulation”, said Bllaca.
Other organizations for the protection of business interests have also requested that this draft law regulate the field of competition in the Kosovo market.
