Dessislava Fessenko

The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) rejected complainants’ locus standi to challenge the commitments accepted by the Bulgarian Commission for the Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) in antitrust cases. Complainants were considered to lack any cause for appeal because commitments (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the «CPC») closed an investigation into alleged bid-rigging practices among suppliers of pharmaceuticals absent collaborative evidence of price coordination and with further regard to the transparency-enhancing effects of the domestic (...)

The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) dismissed liability for participation in a hard-core agreement with respect to parties that were not active in the market concerned by it. The grounds of judgment do not reveal a particular rationale behind it. However, the ruling invites (...)

The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the "SAC") expanded the scope of requests for information in competition law investigations by ruling that the national competition authority - the Commission for the Protection of Competition (the "CPC") - might seek to obtain any information that it (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) considered behavioural commitments in two cases of dominant undertakings’ refusal to supply for a first time in its practice. In both cases, the proposed commitments essentially boiled down to the adoption of internal instructions (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) considered behavioural commitments in two cases of dominant undertakings’ refusal to supply for a first time in its practice. In both cases, the proposed commitments essentially boiled down to the adoption of internal instructions (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) found that a network of vertical exclusivity agreements regarding construction and exploitation of Internet infrastructure and access to Internet that covered 86% of the relevant market foreclosed new entries and expansion by (...)

The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) annulled the first decision of the Bulgarian Commission for the Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) declaring domestic statutory provisions incompatible with Articles 3(1)(g) and 10 in conjunction with Article 81 of the EC Treaty and that (...)

The Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (“SAC”) thrashed out the fundamentals of the notion of “anticompetitive agreement” under the local equivalent of Article 81(1) of the EC Treaty in a recent cartel case judgment. The aftermath is somewhat cryptic but possibly instructive: the SAC held that (...)

Parts of this article feature in another publication of the author on the same matter for e-Competition. See : Dessislava Fessenko, The Bulgarian competition authority applies for the first time Art. 81.1 EC and sanctions 14 insurance companies for fixing minimum levels (Association of the (...)

A new Bulgarian Act on the Protection of Competition (the “New APC”) entered into force on 2 December 2008. The New APC is aimed at the further convergence of the Bulgarian substantive and procedural rules in the field of antitrust, abuse of dominance and merger control with the Community (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the ¡°CPC¡±) found that a methodology for setting the prices of structural design services adopted by a professional regulation body effectively introduced minimum price maintenance and condemned the methodology as anticompetitive. The (...)

On 15 July 2008, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) sanctioned 14 insurance companies for fixing minimum levels of the premium for the compulsory Civil Liability insurance for car drivers (“Civil Liability insurance”) and of the commission paid to insurance brokers (...)

By a judgment of early April this year, the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) upheld a ruling of the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) that non-profit organizations could not be regarded as “undertakings” in the competition law sense of the word if they (...)

On 9 January 2008, the Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) handed down a final judgment. in a dispute between the local telecom incumbent - Bulgarian Telecommunication Company AD (“BTC”) and the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) concerning an alleged margin squeeze (...)

The first two sections of the article are derived from another article by the same author concerning the NCA decision in the case ; see Dessislava Fessenko, The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition fined foreign-based suppliers for thwarting parallel imports of premium branded (...)

By Decision n° 510 of 5 July 2007, the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) held Bulgarian Telecommunication Company AD (“BTC”) liable for abusing its dominant position in the market for voice telephony services by refusing to provide interconnection between its (...)

On 9 February 2007 the Supreme Administrative Court (the “Supreme Court”) handed down a decision of the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) finding that Ecopack Bulgaria AD (“Ecopack”), a collective waste-handling organization holding the right to use the trade mark “Der (...)

The Bulgarian competition and state aid law dates back to the first years of legislative reforms following the political changes in 1989. The follow-up transition from planned to market economy brought about a competitive business environment and prompted the adoption of the first Act on (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) sanctioned six collective management societies for abusing their collective dominant position by imposing unfair pricing conditions for licensing to cable TV operators the rights that the societies managed, as well as for refusal (...)

By this Decision of 2 November 2006 the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (“the Commission”) cleared a State aid in the form of compensation for public transportation services, provided on the territory of Municipality of Elena, North-Eastern Bulgaria, by the transport operator (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) exempted an exclusive supply and distribution agreement between GSK Bulgaria and Agroengineering from the prohibition of the local equivalent of Article 101 TFEU on grounds that the agreement guaranteed regular supplies at most (...)

By Decision n° 136 of 22 June 2006 (the “CPC decision”), the Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) fined three foreign-based beverage suppliers for preventing parallel imports of premium branded alcohols into Bulgaria. The CPC decision is noteworthy for introducing the (...)

In a case concerning alleged price fixing, the Bulgarian Supreme Administrative Court (the “SAC”) ruled out anti-competitive objectives and effects of a minimum premium tariff for Green Card insurance and held that eight insurance companies had not breached the domestic antitrust rules by (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “CPC”) held that a call option for purchase of a majority stake in a target company, as well as certain minority shareholder protection rights, conferred no control in the competition law meaning of the notion and, thus, did not lead to (...)

The Bulgarian Commission for Protection of Competition (the «CPC«) found that minority shareholder protection rights conferred no control in the competition law meaning of the notion because they did not relate to the exercise of decisive influence but merely to preservation of the shareholder’s (...)