The Competition Authority (“ Authority ”) continues to work intensively. In this context, the first Competition Board (“Board”) decision on the termination of the preliminary inquiry procedure using the commitment mechanism has been published on the website of the Authority.
As it is known, the "Communiqué on the Commitments to be Offered in Preliminary Inquiries and Investigations Concerning Agreements, Concerted Practices And Decisions Restricting Competition, and Abuse of Dominant Position" ("
Commitment Communiqué") has been published in the Official Gazette dated 16 March 2021 and numbered 31425. In this way, many legal gaps and uncertainties about the commitment mechanism have been clarified by drawing a regular legal framework. You can find the information note we prepared earlier on this subject
here.
The current development is as follows: While the preliminary inquiry procedure of the Board regarding Türkiye Şişe ve Cam Fabrikaları A.Ş. and its subsidiary Şişecam Çevre Sistemleri A.Ş. in accordance with Article 40 of the Law on the Protection of Competition No. 4054 is ongoing, a comprehensive commitment package has been presented by the aforementioned parties as a result of the commitment negotiations held pursuant to the undertakings' application for the initiation of the commitment procedure regarding the competitive concerns in the file.
As a result of the discussion on the file by the Board on 21 October 2021, it has been decided to terminate the preliminary inquiry by making the relevant commitment package binding, since the commitments presented had been of a resolving qualification to the competition issues. In other words, with the introduction of the commitment mechanism by the undertakings, the procedure has been completed without the inquiry phase.
On the basis of each concrete case, undertakings at the preliminary inquiry phase should definitely consider resorting to this method before proceeding to the inquiry phase.
You can access the explanation text and the announcement published on the Authority's website
here.
The justified decision on this subject will be notified later and will be published on the Authority's website.
MORAL & PARTNERS
Nur Duygu Bozkurt Kadirhan, Senior Attorney