engleski

Control of mergers in grocery retail market in Croatia

Merger control in grocery retail market in Croatia has seen an unprecedented flurry of cases since 2004 with the largest competitor on the market spreading to various local markets where smaller competitors had their strongholds. Apart from horizontal mergers that had to be scrutinised in a number of local markets, a vertical integration took place which also asked for a close and careful inspection. In the merger control domain this wave of mergers has been perhaps the biggest challenge for the Croatian competition authority since its inception in 1997. In the face of the growing market concentration the authority saw fit to shift from initially providing green light to notified grocery retail mergers to subsequently addressing serious competition concerns by ordering a number of structural and behavioural remedies in specific cases. In this process the authority relied heavily on the merger practice of the European Commission in particular as regards defining relevant product and geographic markets. This paper aims to discuss criteria used to evaluate grocery retail mergers in Croatia from the comparative point of view, especially taking into account EU merger control rules and practice, in order to assess whether a competition level playing field has been created on the basis of application of EU rules by the national competition authority.

grocery; retail; competition law; relevant market; merger control

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