These Guidelines further specify the manner in which the Commission for the Protection of Competition determines significant bargaining power.

In order to facilitate its application and ensure legal certainty, the Law on Trading Practices for Certain Types of Products establishes a presumption of significant bargaining power on the part of the buyer based on the objective criterion of financial strength, namely the amount of annual turnover.

Significant bargaining power refers to the ability of one contracting party to impose its terms on the other, arising from an imbalance in their respective economic positions.

A buyer is presumed to have significant bargaining power where its turnover substantially exceeds that of the supplier (e.g. where the supplier’s annual turnover is up to EUR 2 million, while the buyer’s exceeds EUR 2 million). This objective economic criterion alleviates the supplier’s evidentiary burden, while not precluding the possibility of establishing significant bargaining power in other circumstances, thereby ensuring a balance between legal certainty and substantive fairness.

When assessing significant bargaining power, due consideration will be given, among other factors, to the parties’ patterns of contractual conduct, in particular: which party initiates amendments to the contractual terms; whether one party accepts terms without negotiation; which party has, in practice, borne financial concessions without corresponding compensation; as well as the history of negotiations, the amount and frequency of payments or fees under the contractual relationship in question, and under comparable contractual arrangements between the buyer and other suppliers.

These Guidelines shall enter into force on 18 July 2026, on the eighth day following their publication in the Official Gazette of the Republic of Serbia.