The Hellenic Competition Commission (HCC), within the context of its actions to promote and enhance competition organized a webinar on “Expanding the boundaries of Competition Law- Article 1A of Greek Competition Law and other examples” on 28 November 2022. The webinar focused on the recent reform of Greek competition law regarding the new provision Article 1A of Law 3959/2011 on invitations to collude and/or price signaling and addressed the significance of this reform as well as its link to the ongoing effort to expand the boundaries of competition law in other jurisdictions regarding equivalent behavior, such as Section 5 FTC Act and /or Article 32f GWB.

The new article 1A was introduced in Law 3959/2011 by Law 4886/2022 aiming at the optimal implementation of articles 1 and 2 of the law, regarding two different forms of unilateral practices with significant negative effects on competition, consisting of: (a) invitation(s) to collude with the object of preventing, restricting or distorting competition in the Greek territory, or (b) announcement(s) relating to communicating mainly future pricing intentions for products or services between undertakings that are competitors (“price signaling”) if the disclosure restricts competition in the Greek territory and is not an ordinary business practice.

The Hellenic Competition Commission issued draft guidelines for the implementation of the provisions of article 1A of Law 3959/2011 and respectively launched a public consultation in order to receive feedback from stakeholders, market participants and undertakings on the proposed guidelines. The guidelines set out the principles for the assessment under Article 1A of unilateral practices of undertakings pertaining to invitations to collude and price signaling, which may lead to competition issues. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide an analytical framework for the most common types of invitations to collude and price signaling, which is primarily based on legal and economic criteria that help to analyse the above practices, the context and the market circumstances in which they occur. Economic criteria such as the market power of the parties and other factors relating to the market structure form a key element of the assessment of these practices under Article 1A. The assessment under Article 1A as described in the guidelines is without prejudice to the application of Articles 1 and 2 of L. 3959/2011 (and/or Articles 101 and 102 TFEU).

The webinar addressed the issue of invitations to collude and price signaling as a competition law concern and discussed on the various approaches adopted across jurisdictions with regard to this phenomenon, focusing on the reform of Article 1A and the draft guidelines.

The webinar was joined by prominent academics of international standing.

You can see the programme and watch the video of the webinar here and on YouTube (in English).