Amendments to Competition Act
Establishment of Competition Protection Agency


On July 7 2012 the act amending the Competition Act was published in the Official Gazette. The new act entered into force on July 8 2012 and served to reorganise the main bodies of the still-awaited Competition Protection Agency (at that time still an administrative body within the Ministry for Economic Affairs). On August 24 2012 the Decision on the Establishment of the Slovenian Competition Protection Agency was published (again). However, the agency still has not been officially entered into the Commercial Court Registry and is not yet fully operational.

Amendments to Competition Act

According to the new act, the Competition Protection Agency will have only two main bodies - the council and the agency director. The agency director will deal with the day-to-day running of the agency and the council will be in charge of general matters regarding the governance of the agency (this has already been enacted with the previous amendment to the act).

Under the amending act, the bodies in charge of adopting decisions in individual cases will be the senate and the president of the senate. The senate will be composed of the members of the council and the president of the senate will be elected from among the members of the senate for each concrete case. However, in minor offence proceedings the body adopting decisions will be a special minor offence senate, which will be appointed for each proceeding by the council from among the members of the council and employees of the agency.

Establishment of Competition Protection Agency

This is the second decision in relation to the establishment of the agency (the first was adopted by the government in July 2011), but the agency has not yet been established.

This decision establishes that the agency that will be fully operational from its entry in the Commercial Court Registry, but this has not yet happened; nor have the main bodies been nominated by Parliament. The agency is rumoured to become fully operational by the end of the year (or more probably in January 2013), when it will also become an independent user of the national budget.

For further information on this topic please contact Eva Škufca at Schönherr Slovenia in cooperation with Odvetniška pisarna Soršak, doo by telephone (+386 1 2000 980), fax (+386 1 4260 711) or email ([email protected]).

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