Ukraine: Rules for Vertical Agreements Adopted

The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) developed a set of rules to simplify assessment of agreements on the supply, distribution, and use of products.

The document implements EU Regulation 330/2010 closely following its lines. The AMC also declares that it will use the relevant EU Guidelines on vertical restraints as a practical guidance.

For more details, please see our earlier alert regarding the same.

To recap, the new regulation clarifies, most notably, that:

•	vertical arrangements where parties' market shares do not exceed 30% (except for hard core restrictions) fall within the safe harbor;
•	the following practices cannot be block exempted (irrespective of the market shares) and are subject to individual assessment/approval by the AMC, in particular:
	○	restrictions on resale prices;
	○	restrictions by territory or by customers (except for some restrictions on active sales under the exclusive distribution and on sales to unauthorized distributors under the selective distribution);
	○	restrictions of cross-supplies within a selective distribution system;
	○	restrictions of the supplier's ability to sell the components as spare parts to end-users or to repairers;
	○	long-term non-compete clauses;
•	agency arrangements generally fall outside this new set of rules.

Currently, the AMC does not intend to follow the EU approach and implement special rules for the motor sector.

For further information please contact Igor Svechkar, Alexey Pustovit, or Tetiana Vovk.