Grzegorz Materna

Grzegorz Materna is a solicitor and a member of the Warsaw Chamber of Legal Advisors. He graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration at Warsaw University. He was awarded a PhD in Competition Law from the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Mr Materna has spent his career in the practice and study of European and Polish competition law. For 14 years, he worked at the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (the “Authority”) where he accumulated a wealth of knowledge and hands-on experience in the enforcement of Polish and European Union competition law. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Materna was directly involved in carrying out investigatory proceedings and drafting decisions on behalf of the Chairman of the Authority. He organized and participated in inspections and searches carried out by the Authority, and represented it in cases before the Competition and Consumer Protection Court as well as the Court of Appeals. He served as the Deputy Director of the Authority’s Warsaw branch office, and was later promoted to the position of Director of the Authority’s Department of Competition Protection, a position he held for nearly six years. As Director, he was responsible for the Authority’s investigations and enforcement of violations of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and the Polish Competition Act’s equivalents. He oversaw investigations and proceedings in matters of horizontal and vertical anticompetitive agreements; cartels; and abuses of dominance. He was responsible for approving drafts of decisions and resolutions prepared by his Department, and also for issuing such decisions on behalf of the Chairman of the Authority. Under his supervision, his Department prepared recommendations to the Chairman of the Authority, monitored the market and initiated investigatory proceedings in competition cases. As Director, Mr Materna directly cooperated with other national regulatory authorities, the police and state inspection authorities during inspections and searches, and with the European Commission in applying EU competition rules (which, among other things, meant providing necessary assistance during dawn raids carried out by the European Commission). Mr Materna supervised the forensic IT support that his Department provided to the Authority’s branch offices and to its own investigations. In recent years, Mr. Materna focused on the offense of bid rigging. He trained and lectured to government procurement officials on the detection and prevention of bid rigging. He also represented the Polish Authority in the EU Cohesion Policy Fund Fraud Prevention Task Force, which operated within the Inter-Ministerial Panel on Fighting Fraud Committed against Poland or the European Union. While working in the Polish Authority, Mr Materna was deeply involved in drafting laws, regulations and the Authority’s guidance papers. In particular, he worked on a comprehensive package of amendments to the Polish competition law, the effect of which was the Act of 10th June 2014 on the Amendments to the Competition and Consumer Protection Act and the Civil Procedure Code (Journal of Laws 2014, pos. 945), together with their executive regulations. Mr Materna combines his practice of competition law with a passion for legal science. He became associated with the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2006, and three years later he defended his PhD thesis on competition law at the Institute. Mr. Materna wrote or collaborated on dozens of publications on Polish and European competition and consumer protection law and intellectual property protection. He co-authored commentaries on the Polish Competition and Consumer Protection Act and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Mr. Materna is an experienced teacher, and lectures on the subjects of competition protection, consumer protection, unfair-competition, and intellectual property rights to postgraduate students at the Warsaw School of Economics and at the Legal Science Institute.