• Anti-competitive agreements between businesses that prevent, restrict or distort competition and affect trade in Croatia or outside its territory, if such practices take effect Croatia. Agreements likely to be prohibited include those which fix the prices to be charged for goods or services, limit production, carve up markets, discriminate between customers (e.g. charge different prices or impose different terms where there is no difference in what is being supplied). Decisions of associations of businesses are also covered, as are concerted practices (i.e. cooperation which falls short of an agreement or decision).
• Cartels are the most serious form of an anti-competitive agreement. They are agreements between businesses – competing undertakings not to compete with each other. Cartel agreements can often be verbal and secret and may be hard to uncover.
• Abuse of a dominant market position – A dominant position in a market essentially means that a business is generally able to behave independently of competitive pressures, such as other competitors, in that market. Conduct which may be considered an abuse by a business in a dominant position includes: charging excessively high prices, limiting production, refusing to supply an existing long standing customer without good reason, charging different prices to different customers where there is no difference in what is being supplied, making a contract conditional on factors that have nothing to do with the subject of the contract.

Merger control

Mergers above a certain financial threshold must be notified to the CCA for assessment.  The idea is not to hold up “good mergers” and to protect the interests of consumers where it has the power to block mergers where it finds that it will lead to a “significant impediment to competition”.