Constitutional court has upheld the CCA decision

In deciding about the constitutional claim against the ruling of the Administrative Court of the Republic of Croatia, the Constitutional Court rejected the claim filed by the undertaking Tisak d.d. against the decision of the Croatian Competition Agency of 15 October 2007 on the basis of which abuse of a joint dominant position was established by the undertakings Tisak d.d. and Distri-Press d.d. in the general information dailies wholesale in the territory of the Republic of Croatia from 2005 to 2007.

Amongst other things, the Constitutional Court particularly upheld the decision of the CCA and the ruling of the Administrative Court in respect of appropriate application of the competition rules applicable in the EU and interpretative instruments adopted by the EU institutions in line with the commitments undertaken under the Stabilization and Association Agreement in force since 1 February 2005. The application of the relevant EU case law once again proved necessary in the assessment of particular cases where abuse of dominance and its negative effects on the affected markets, directly or indirectly, harm consumers.  The full text of the decision of the Constitutional Court will be published in the Official Gazette.

It is worth noting that the Agency established abuse of a joint dominant position by the undertakings Tisak and Distri-Press starting as of 2 March 2005 in the daily press distribution wholesale market in the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The abuse in question pertained to the distribution of the daily newspaper 24 sata published by the undertaking Media-Ideja d.o.o., Zagreb. The proceeding itself was initiated upon the request by Media-Ideja. In this case, where the retail price of the daily newspaper 24 sata was 3 HRK, the price for the distribution services had been uniformly set under the general business terms, yet made dependant of the total number of distributed issues of the particular daily and the returns from the agents. Nevertheless, all other daily newspapers publishers, whose retail price for dailies was 6 HRK, had been charged by Tisak and Distri Press only the uniform price agreed for the distribution services, disregarding the returns from the agents. Thus, the only Croatian press distributors operating on the national level applied dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with different trading parties, thus discriminating the publisher Media-Ideja in respect of its competitors in the affected daily newspapers publishers market.

In line with the 2003 Competition Act the relevant minor offence court will on the basis of the request of the CCA decide on the level of fine for the stated infringement.