Competition law in the BRICS countries

Wolters Kluwer publishing house together with the International Bar Association (IBA) published the book “Competition law in the BRICS Countries”. The authors point out the increasingly important role of competition agencies and rapid development of competition law in each of the BRICS countries.

The articles of the collection deal with the issues of competition law of Brazil, Russia, India, China and the South-African Republic. Also, a comparative analysis of competition protection law is done. The authors have studied in detail the following matters:

• Development of antitrust policy in each country and in the significant spheres of economy;
• Criteria of abuse of dominating position;
• Investigations of violations of competition law;
• Application of administrative and criminal legislation;
• Participation of the state in antitrust measures.

The book was authored by 29 practicing lawyers, antitrust agencies’ members and researchers of competition law from Brazil, Russia, India, China and the South-African Republic. Arthur Rokhlin, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", and Radmila Nikitina, Head of Competition Law Group of the Firm, are the co-authors of the chapter on abuse of dominating position in Russia.

The co-authors point out that, in the last five years, the application of the Competition Protection Law provisions on the abuse of dominating position became a priority of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). This is explained by the fact that most ventures in Russia historically have obtained their domination not by competition but through privatization.

Currently, over a half of all FAS investigations are connected to the cases of abuse of dominating position by the business entities on certain commodities’ markets, and the amounts of the fines for this type of offence have grown sharply. The experts note that petrochemistry, pharmaceutics, financial services, telecommunications, energy, railway transportation are among the spheres closely watched by the FAS.

Arthur Rokhlin and Radmila Nikitina answer the following questions:

• Which business entities may be recognized as dominating;
• How to define threshold values of the market shares;
• Which criteria are used for defining competition limitations;
• What are per se prohibitions;
• What kind of liability may arise for the abuse of dominating position etc.

More details on the book are available here.

Printed version of the chapter on abuse of dominating position: