MONTENEGRO Trends and Developments Contributed by: Bisera Andrijasevic, BDK Advokati
its nature could not impact the local market. This stance was taken despite the Montenegrin Com - petition Act specifying that its provisions apply to acts conducted abroad only if those acts have or could have an impact on competition within the Montenegrin market. To date, no courts have expressed a view on a potential jurisdictional defence in such cases. Definition and Assessment of Relevant Markets The Agency defines relevant markets based on the Rulebook on the Manner and Criteria for Def - inition of the Relevant Market (“the Rulebook”). The Rulebook is grounded in the 1997 Commis - sion Notice on the definition of the relevant mar - ket for the purposes of Community competition law. Despite the European Commission’s adop - tion of the revised Market Definition Notice for competition cases at the beginning of 2024, the Rulebook has not yet been updated. While it is based on the 1997 Notice, the Rulebook offers less detailed guidance than the latter. However, it is broad enough to be interpreted in alignment with the revised Notice. Given that the Agency has consistently relied on EU decisional practice and soft law, it is anticipated that it will, when relevant, incorporate the experience and estab - lished principles from the revised Notice. The challenge in the Agency’s assessment prac - tice lies not so much in market definitions but in considering markets that are not relevant for assessing the impact of a concentration on competition. Due to the low filing threshold in Montenegro, a large number of transactions are notifiable, even when one of the concen - tration participants has no local sales. In such cases, the Agency often treats each market where the acquirer or the target are separately present in the jurisdiction as a relevant market, and requests detailed market data. This places
a burden on the notifying party(ies) to provide information that ultimately does not contribute to competition law analysis. It is hoped that the Guidelines for Submission of Merger Notifica - tions will be revised to limit the scope of nec - essary information and documents, particularly in cases where there is no horizontal overlap or vertical effects arising from the concentration. Uncertain Timeframe The Montenegrin Competition Act does not include an effective procedural guarantee ensur - ing that, even when the routine notification of a concentration is submitted, with no adverse effect on the local market, it will receive approval within the shortest possible timeframe. Consid - ering that each request from the Agency resets the timeline and a new deadline starts (105 days for an unconditional approval), the clearance date may become a moving target. The average duration of proceedings for con - centrations cleared in 2024 was approximately 120 days, with each approved through summary proceedings, primarily due to the limited number of case handlers in the Agency’s merger unit and the high volume of notified concentrations result - ing from low thresholds. Delays tend to occur most frequently during the summer months and around the winter holidays. To enhance the likeli - hood of a swift approval, parties are advised to submit their notification as completely as pos - sible, even if they believe certain required infor - mation and documents are not relevant to the specific assessment. Following the public discussion on the amend - ments to the Competition Act, the ministry pro - visionally accepted the proposal to introduce a shorter (25- or 30-day) deadline for approval of non-issue concentrations in summary proceed - ings. This would run from the submission of a
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