The CPC adopted its enforcement priorities in applying the Law on Protection of Competition for 2023

By decision №101/26.01.2023 the CPC adopted annual priorities in pursuing antitrust, unfair competition and unfair commercial practices cases.

In the context of the dynamic socio-economic and political environment competition enforcement is an important tool in the post-pandemic economic recovery and the reinforcement of the internal market, being the European integration’s highest value.

The business and the consumers more than ever need competitive prices, availability and innovation and the competition law must adapt to adequately meet the dynamic environment.

With this respect, in 2023 the CPC will maintain its focus in the investigating and sanctioning of cartel agreements and bid-rigging, which reveal high potential to harm market relations, market structure and the competitive process between undertakings. Bid-rigging causes substantial harm to the public contractors and affect the legitimate distribution of public resources.

The particular sectors that the CPC will continue to carefully monitor throughout the year and will intervene with priority in exercise of its antitrust competence include: pharmaceuticals, energy, gas, production and distribution of food. The CPC finds these sectors are of main importance for its enforcement activity as they have fundamental significance to the national economy, considerable influence over the competitive process in other economic sectors and directly affect the welfare of the citizens as consumers.

In 2023 the CPC will continue to monitor the compliance with the antitrust rules in the dynamically developing digital economy (digital markets, e-commerce) and the sustainability agreements. These new or newly emerging markets are attracting attention from a number of national competition authorities in the EU and worldwide due to their considerable importance to the development of competitive national economies, innovation and fostering a sustainable infrastructure.

This year the CPC puts particular emphasis to the monitoring and antitrust enforcement of the market for financial services. The CPC undertakes to safeguard the competition in this important sector, particularly on account of the rapidly developing relations of supply and demand, the emergence of new services and new players in the payment ecosystem along with the strengthening of the market position of some of them. Regardless of the benefits brought about by innovation in the payment services markets the CPC will monitor the development of these processes and relations along with the regulatory framework and will intervene according to its enforcement competence.

A priority in CPC’s activity will be to ensure the promotion of open and competitive labor market, with particular focus on the ‘no poach agreements’ which may occur in any sector. These are agreements between employers/competitors on the labor market that have the potential to restrict competition by abstaining from approaching and hiring employees from one another. These agreements attract growing attention from competition authorities across the world, especially in the post-COVID environment where the labor conditions in nearly every economic sector are changing.

This process is expected to continue to unfold, considering the growing number of such agreements as a standard practice in the area of Human resource management in number of industries. With this in mind it is extremely important to ensure effective and fair competition between employers as the labor market has a strong impact across various sectors and thus is essential to the wellbeing of the economy and promotion of innovations and growth, and is of key importance to the process of tackling the consequences of the post-pandemic economy crisis.

Law enforcement in the field of unfair competition (Chapter Seven of the LPC) and prohibited commercial practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain (the new Chapter Seven B of the LPC) is also one of the main priorities of the Commission's activities in 2023. CPC will monitor the business behaviour concerning the advertising and promotion of goods and services with reduced prices and other conditions that attract consumers - particularly sensitive in this regard. The Commission will monitor the veracity of the advertising information and the legality of the active promotions, carrying out, if necessary, preliminary inquiries, respectively initiating proceedings on its own for the establishment of possible infringements, affecting the competitive relations in an unfair manner, and hence - the interests of consumers. Considering the growing importance of e-commerce, the CPC will actively monitor the behaviour of businesses when conducting online sales, with a view to complying with the rules of fair competition. One of the main priorities of the Commission will be monitoring the behaviour of retail chains and other big buyers of food and agricultural products, in relation to the prices of essential goods, incl.  the retail market, payment terms and other conditions in contracts and relations with suppliers, as well as promotions of these goods – whether  the UTP prohibitions are violated and the interests of the suppliers - affected. Therefore requests for such infringements will be considered on a priority basis.

By setting out the aforementioned annual priorities will be ensured the necessary transparency in the CPC’s practice as to which economic sectors and/or types of infringements the CPC will focus its public prerogatives through the current year. Thereby is attained a higher degree of legal certainty and protection of the rights of defense of the applicants whose applications under the Law on Protection of Competition have been dismissed on grounds of the prioritization criteria.

The full text of the decision setting out the enforcement priorities of the CPC for 2023 when acting under Chapter nine and Chapter twelve of the Law on Protection of Competition is available in the public electronic registry of the CPC: https://www.cpc.bg/annual-reports