On February 7^th, members of “Investors’ Forum” met with the representatives of Lithuanian Competition Council. During the meeting various topics of different cases were discussed, members of “Investors’ Forum” were able to gain insights on the standpoints of the Competition Council and find out what principles does the Competition Council base their investigations on.

The meeting revealed that CC puts a lot of emphasis on staying an independent authority and place no political benevolences or prejudices on political figures or institutions, neither upon the Government. The Competition Council recognizes this as one of the key requirements in order to remain professional and carry the appointed work for them to the fullest extent.

Even though, some issues are raised by politicians and government representatives that Competition Council only investigate the “richest” market players disregarding existing monopolies, the truth is that politicians tend to overstate market situation calling out monopolies which in reality are mostly regulated and CC cannot get involved more. That would make CC a regulatory institution which is not the goal of the Competition Council.

The representatives of the CC also addressed the question of settlement. In order for the investigated company to exploit the possibility of settlement – the investigated company should propose the solution as early and as complete as possible in order to have leverage in proposing the settlement early to safe CC’s resources. The proposal of a settlement after the CC has finished its investigation has no purpose and value for the Competition Council.

What is more, in order to achieve an efficient settlement a dialog between both parties should be intact. The complainant companies are encouraged to be active during the investigation to provide better insights on the actual market situation instead of CC representatives trying to figure it out for themselves.

On the other hand, the CC agrees that dialog procedures should be established in Lithuanian law and a clear procedure protocol on arranging settlement should be drafted as well. Investors’ Forum offered their resources in order to help prepare the drafts for law amendments.

Moreover, the Competition Council expressed their goal of being more transparent about the states of their investigations and preliminary findings.

Last but not the least, a topic of fine setting was discussed. Even though, the existent system of fine attribution based directly on the turnover of the investigated company may sometimes be interpreted as unfairly high (in case of very large companies with huge turnovers, a fine of even a small percentage of turnover may result in losses of millions of Litas), the Competition Council is adamant that it is the most effective method of preventing companies from the will to skew fair competition. However, the Competition Board is open for discussions on appointing lesser fines for companies that may disrupt fair competition without even knowing about it themselves.