CYPRUS Law and Practice Contributed by: Marios Pelides and Dominique Pelides, Georgiades & Pelides
ability to eliminate competition for a large part of the relevant products or services.
In practice, both behavioural and structural rem - edies (eg, divestitures) may be accepted and/or proposed by the CPC. However, very few notifi - cations to the CPC proceed to a Phase II investi - gation, and as such, there are only a small num - ber of examples where competition clearance has been granted subject to remedies. Examples of remedies which have been used include: • a condition that the directors of a participant of a joint venture cannot also act as directors of the joint venture itself, and that information will be treated confidentially and not shared between the two boards of directors; • a requirement that the joint venture entity maintain a competition compliance manual; • a commitment that any transactions between the target and its shareholders will be carried out on arm’s length terms; • a commitment that access be provided to new market entrants to infrastructure con - trolled by the concentration, at cost; and • a requirement that specific equipment be sold within 12 months. No remedies have been reported which were imposed for the purposes of addressing non- competition related issues. 5.3 Legal Standard Any remedies or amendments to the transac - tion proposed by the parties must follow a form prescribed by the Law and must be submitted to the CPC within the timeframe that may be pre - scribed by the CPC. The Law does not specify a particular legal standard which must be met by proposed remedies, but in practice, the rem - edies will need to be sufficient in order to fully eliminate the competition concerns that have been identified.
5. Decision: Prohibitions and Remedies 5.1 Authorities’ Ability to Prohibit or Interfere With Transactions As noted in 2.12 Requirement for Clearance Before Implementation and 2.13 Penalties for the Implementation of a Transaction Before Clearance , notifiable transactions may not be implemented prior to CPC clearance (or in cir - cumstances where the CPC issues a decision denying clearance). If a transaction is imple - mented without CPC clearance, the CPC may issue fines and/or order that the transaction be unwound. 5.2 Parties’ Ability to Negotiate Remedies Where the CPC decides to proceed to a Phase II investigation, it will inform the parties that they are entitled to modify the transaction or suggest remedies to resolve identified competition con - cerns. As part of the Phase II investigation, the CPC will examine whether any additional infor - mation it has obtained from the participants (or from third parties), combined with any remedies and/or amendments to the transaction that may have been proposed by the participants, are suf - ficient to allay the competition concerns identi - fied by the CPC during the Phase I investigation. If competition concerns persist, the CPC may (if it has identified any remedies and/or amend - ments to the transaction which it believes will resolve the competition concerns it has identi - fied) enter into negotiations regarding remedies and/or amendments with the parties.
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