New merger control thresholds are among the top priorities of the Ukrainian competition authority

According to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, a comprehensive reform of competition regulation is coming. Merger control is placed second among the short term priorities and will be addressed in the new draft law to be submitted to the Parliament the nearest weeks.

The draft law further aligns Ukrainian legislation with the EU framework, including introduction of full-functionality criteria for joint ventures, clarification of appreciable restriction of competition as the only ground for prohibition of mergers (monopolization and abuse of dominance are proposed to be removed), and some other changes.

The major novelties of the draft law, however, are the new thresholds. Firstly, turnover and assets value of an exiting seller shall no longer be counted towards the target for the purposes of calculation of the notifiability thresholds. This removes the legacy imperfection of Ukrainian merger control system where the merger clearance requirement could be technically triggered only by a seller. However, the target’s threshold is proposed to be decreased from EUR4 million to EUR 2 million.

We will follow-up with a detailed overview of the reform once the draft law is registered with the Parliament, please contact Igor Svechkar, Oleksandr Voznyuk and Alexey Pustovit for details.