CROATIA Trends and Developments Contributed by: Mirna Mišetić, Mišetić & Partners
• a longer-term softening of competitive pressure that may dampen incentives for innovation, diversi - fication and quality improvement. The Agency’s response was a remedies package of unusual depth. Rather than relying on traditional behavioural or structural commitments alone, the con - ditions of clearance included multi-year investment obligations to be implemented over a five-year hori - zon, supplier-related commitments, and a monitoring framework designed to ensure compliance through - out the commitment period. Measured against the practice of larger EU jurisdictions, the breadth and forward-looking character of these commitments is notable. When cross - border pressure shapes the assessment The Agency’s second recent decision worth highlight - ing illustrates the analytical approach in a different set - ting. In May 2026, the Agency cleared a concentra - tion in a processing industry segment, in which an entity already active in the relevant industry through a group subsidiary acquired control of a major domes - tic producer. The Agency’s substantive assessment expressly took into account the competitive pressure and trade flows from neighbouring jurisdictions rel - evant to evaluating market conditions in Croatia. In this sector, the product is freely tradable across the EU and with neighbouring non-EU jurisdictions. Producers from neighbouring countries supply the Croatian market in significant volumes; import barri - ers are limited; and retailers play an active role both as purchasers and as developers of their own offer - ings. These features were among the considerations that informed the Agency’s view that the transaction did not create or strengthen a dominant position and would not significantly impede effective competition. A further, and analytically distinctive, element of the Agency’s reasoning concerned the structural conse - quences accompanying the transaction and the dif - ference between the pre-concentration and post-con - centration structural picture. Pre-concentration, the target was part of a corporate group that also included a leading domestic retail operation and a significant regional producer of comparable products based in a neighbouring jurisdiction. Post-concentration, those
affiliations no longer exist: the target’s vertical link with the retail operation and its horizontal affiliation with the regional producer will have both been dissolved. The Agency expressly took these structural differences into account in concluding that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition. What these two cases have in common What unites these two decisions is a methodologi - cal approach in which the Agency engages closely with the actual competitive dynamics of the sector concerned. Where physical, infrastructural or cultural barriers confine competition to a narrow geographic space (as in the hospitality sector on an island), the Agency is willing to develop remedies that match the depth of those local interdependencies. Where, by contrast, the product is freely tradable across bor - ders and supply from neighbouring jurisdictions exerts meaningful competitive pressure on the Croatian mar - ket, the Agency gives appropriate weight to those cross-border dynamics in its substantive assessment. In both cases, the methodological commitment is the same: the analysis reflects how competition actually operates in the sector under review. For deal-makers, the practical message is that the quality of the competitive narrative submitted to the Agency matters more than ever. Where local specifici - ties are likely to attract close scrutiny, parties should consider the broader social and economic features of the affected market and the scope for tailored commitments. Where cross-border or structural ele - ments support clearance, parties should be ready to substantiate them with concrete evidence – import volumes and capacities, retail dynamics, private label penetration, the consequences of any concurrent cor - porate restructuring – in the notification itself, rather than leaving these arguments to emerge later in the process. Early, evidence-based engagement with the Agency is increasingly a differentiator between smooth and difficult cases. The wider picture: parallel filings around merger control Although merger control remains the primary regulato - ry lens through which concentrations with a Croatian nexus are reviewed, transactional planning increasing -
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