The 2024 St. Martin's Conference Program Will Offer a new Competition Tool and Private Enforcement

The conference will traditionally be opened by the Chairman of the Office, Petr Mlsna, who will then give a word to the participants of the first panel on the news and current developments in the field of competition. Kamil Nejezchleb, Vice-Chairman of the Office, Juraj Beňa, Chairman of the Slovak Competition Authority, and Andrej Matvoz, Chairman of the Slovenian Competition Authority, will take the floor in the panel. The Polish Competition Authority has also tentatively promised to send its representative.

The new competition tool and the markets suitable for its application is the topic of the second panel, moderated by Pavel Doležal (from the Office). Renato Ferrandi from the Italian Competition Authority, Zombor Berezvai from the Hungarian Competition Authority and Goran Serdarević (from Frontier Economics) will share their experience with the introduction of tools that allow competition authorities to intervene in a market under predefined conditions, even if there is no evidence of a cartel or abuse of dominance. The speakers of the second panel will focus, for example, on how to identify markets where the "new competition tool" could be applied.

In the first afternoon session, Ioannis Lianos from University College London will give a special lecture on the challenges of modern competition law enforcement.

Petra Košt'álová (from the Office), Jana Přibylová from the Municipal Court in Prague, Pavel Dejl from the law firm Kocián Šolc Balaštík and Jiří Mňuk from the law firm ROWAN LEGAL will discuss the private enforcement of damages caused by anti-competitive behaviour in the final panel of the first day.

The topic of the fourth conference panel, which will open the second day of the conference, is the experience with the application of unfair trading practices regulations and related sector inquiries. The panel will include Petr Solský, Vice-Chairman of the Czech Competition Authority, Natalie Harsdorf-Borsch, Director General of the Austrian Competition Authority, and Petr Milas from the Federation of the Food and Drink Industries of the Czech Republic (FFDI).

The conclusion of the St. Martin's Conference will be traditionally devoted to workshops. Martin Vitula (from the Office) will moderate a workshop focusing on procedural and other characteristics of merger proceedings, which will also include presentations by Erika Lovásová from the Slovak Competition Authority and Radovan Kubáč from the law firm Nedelka Kubáč advokáti. Igor Pospíšil, Lenka Štaflová (both of from the Office), Jiří Kindl from the law firm Skils and Michal Fiala from the Prosecutor General's Office will open a discussion on the topic of administrative punishment of natural persons for anti-competitive conduct in the second parallel workshop.  

 Conference Program 232 KB

Press Unit of the Office for the Protection of Competition

24/134