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Antitrust and Competition

With global tech giants being brought before judicial authorities, and the European Commission imposing fines to various firms for anti-competitive behavior, the importance of maintaining fair competition in the market has been well established. A healthy competition between enterprises has proven to be beneficial for the economy, since businesses focus on constantly improving their performance, by providing the masses with high-quality, innovative products and services, and more choices that will meet the current necessities of society.

Antitrust and competition laws are designed to regulate how economic power is distributed, ensuring that businesses compete fairly, resulting in the financial growth and evolution of the economy. Their key goal is to provide an equal playing field for businesses within a specific industry so that they can flourish without gaining excessive control of the market.

Antitrust laws are applied to a vast range of business activities, such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of large corporations, predatory business activities of firms like bid-rigging, pricing fixing, and abusing monopolies, and practices that may restrict businesses to trade and compete freely in the market.

The national legal system of Cyprus contains all relevant legislation that regulates competition law matters, such as the Protection of Competition Laws of 2008 and 2014, and the Control of Concentrations between Undertakings Law, 83(I)/2014. However, just like every other member state of the European Union, Cyprus was obligated to integrate the European Union Law in its domestic legal system when entering the Union, with the Cyprus Commission for the Protection of Competition (CPC) responsible for the application and enforcement of both the EU and domestic competition law. All matters related to monopolies and abuse of market power, merger controls, and restrictive agreements and practices, are regulated by the Commission, who may also apply Articles 101 TFEU and 102 TFEU in cases of infringement, or of any investigation related to the matter.

Our firm’s experienced competition team can provide you detailed and strategic advice on all aspects of both EU and domestic competition law. Cartel investigations, merger control, horizontal and vertical commercial agreements, as well as defending complaints of anti-competitive behavior, are very of the few aspects that we extensively deal with. We are here to ensure, through detailed planning, tailored to the standards and practices of the Commission for the Protection of Competition Law in Cyprus, that your strategies and proposed agreements will not be deemed as anti-competitive. Through our M&A practice, we provide practical support and strategic guidance to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for both Phases I and Phase II, to ensure that you achieve your goals while being compliant with the rules of domestic and EU competition law.

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