Delegation of the Commission for Protection of Competition headed by President of the Commission Dr. Miloje Obradović participated at the International Conference on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Croatian Competition Agency organized in Zagreb.

President Obradović also partook in a panel discussion dedicated to judicial control in competition cases. On the occasion, Dr. Obradović pointed that judicial control of competition authority’s decisions is a guarantee of legal certainty for both undertakings and the Commission. For precisely that reason, Dr. Obradović underlined the necessity for specialization of judges on antitrust law and policy subject-matter, since otherwise, in his view, it cannot be expected that the courts will rule in antitrust procedures with full subject-matter jurisdiction, or respectively it can be expected that they will be retained at the level of investigation and assessment of potential infringements of the rules of procedure.

“The problem is, and we have to underline it, that antitrust law and policy subject-matter nonetheless, figuratively speaking, speaks in its own language and cannot be strictly translated into the administrative procedure language, thus we have proposed as a favorable solution to strengthen the education of judges toward advancing judicial capacities in regard to decision-making in this area.” – President Obradović emphasized during the panel discussion.

The Croatian Competition Agency’s Conference was attended by more than one hundred experts – judges, professors, attorneys-at-law and undertakings.

The Commission’s delegation also comprised of Member of the Council Marko Obradović and Senior Advisor in the Competition Infringement Division Marija Kovačević.

This event also served as an opportunity for broadening of already good cooperation established between the Commission for Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia and the Croatian Competition Agency, inter alia, marked with the signing of the Memorandum on Cooperation in 2013, followed by a series of joint activities affecting the operative advancement of the Commission and the Agency.