KYIV. Jan 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Ukrainian parliament passed at second reading bill No. 2168a that increase the threshold for receiving permits from the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine for economic concentration by companies.
A total of 248 lawmakers backed the document on Tuesday.
One of the authors of the bill Viktoria Ptashnyk (Samopomich faction) said in the parliament that the bill relieves small companies from the necessity of receiving permits for concentration at the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine in the cases when their operation does not affect competition on the market.
The Economic Development and Trade Ministry of Ukraine said in its explanation posted on the official website that according to the bill the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine would not show its interest to the acquisition and sale of companies, asset value of which does not exceed EUR 8 million, and the threshold of control over concentrations is increased: before acquisition large concentrations between companies will be checked with annual turnover of over EUR 150 million.
Chair of the parliamentary economic policy committee Andriy Ivanchuk said in the parliament that the bill introduces more flexible procedure for receiving preliminary permits for concentration and increased the fee for submission of applications for receiving these permits by five times.
An attempt to adopt another bill regarding the operation of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine – on amendments to Ukrainian laws on protecting economic competition related to defining fines for violation of legislation on protection of economic competition by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (No. 2431) – failed. The disputable issue was the requirement to ban the revision of sanctions imposed by the committee in courts.
MP Svitlana Zalischuk said that the proposal is not in line with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement that obliges allowing courts to consider sanctions imposed by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.
The bill was sent for repeated second reading with 241 supporting votes.
