Vesna Patrlj, J.D.
Member of the Competition Council

She was born on 4 March 1961.
She graduated from the Faculty of Law University of Zagreb in 1984 and took her bar exam. She became eligible for her postgraduate degree finals at the Faculty of Law University of Zagreb in the area of commercial and company law.

From 1985 to 1997 she was employed at the Croatian Pension Insurance Office and engaged in instruction, control and revision of the implementation of international social insurance agreements. From 1994 to 1997 she was an advisor in the same department and actively participated in the negotiations for the application of social insurance agreements between Croatia and several European countries.

In 1997 she joined the Croatian Competition Agency. From the first days of its establishment she has occupied various competent positions involving the application and implementation of competition rules. From 1997 - 2001 she was head of department of agreements assessment. From 2001 - 2003 she was a deputy assistant director of the Agency. In 2004 she was an independent senior advisor of the president of the Competition Council, from 2004 - 2005 she was director of legal and economic division and from 2005 - 2009 director of competition division. On 20 February 2009 she was appointed member of the Competition Council.

Throughout her career she has been involved in all cases of competition concerns, from assessment of agreements between undertakings, establishment of a dominant position in the market and assessment of compatibility of concentrations between undertakings.

She is a member of the working group for the preparation of negotiations on the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the EU in Chapter 8: Competition policy. She was also an expert member of the technical negotiations for the new CEFTA agreement. She was a member of the first working group for the alignment of competition and state aid rules with the Community acquis and coordinator of the Agency with the EU. She actively participated in the drafting of the Croatian Competition Act and the relevant subordinate legislation.   

She participated in a numerous international seminars and conferences on competition law and policy organized by the EU authorities, OECD, WTO, IBA etc.

She has held papers in many seminars and lectures home and abroad on restrictive agreements and other anticompetitive practices.

She has written several articles on competition, among which her coo-authorship in the Croatian contribution to The Modernisation of European Competition Law, Initial Experiences with Regulation 1/2003, was published in FIDE Congress Publication Vol.2; FIDE XXIII Congress in Linz 2008 deserves special attention.

She is an examiner in the part of the state exam covering the area of competition and state aid law.

 
She is fluent in English.