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by Joanna Lech
3 August 2020
Compliance is a set of rules in place in an organisation to ensure that it operates in compliance with applicable laws and in-house standards, principles of good governance or intra-group procedures.
Compliance with applicable lawsis, among others, compliance with competition law in its broad sense, as governed by national and EU laws.
In Poland, competition law is regulated, among others, in:
Competition law is applicable, first and foremost, to consumers (Article 4(1) of the Competition and Consumer Protection Act (CCPA), Article 2 of the Unfair Competition Act (UCA)) or enterprises (Article 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), so to a large group of people and enterprises that are not only obliged to observe the law themselves, but also to ensure that their employees do that too.
Competition law is based on three principles (according to the CCPA):
According to the Unfair Competition Act, an act of unfair competition is any activity contrary to law or good morals if it threatens or violates the interest of another enterprise or customer.
Acts of unfair competition include in particular:
Enterprises and their employees should be fully aware of which acts performed in the company may be considered violations of law under the applicable laws.
Competition law policy is an internal document in place in the organisation, whose main purpose is to make the employees and third parties aware of the laws in force, of prohibitions and penalties for their violations.The policy is an internal legal act of the organisation and it is usually implemented by entity’s management. It should be a kind of a comprehensive overview of acts of unfair competition, provide descriptions of the acts as such, specify penalties for violations of law and say what to do in the event of suspicion of such an act (or clear doubts related to competition law).
Training is another tool which allows minimising the risk of potential violations and is considered the most common form of passing knowledge to employees.
Pursuant to the CCPA, penalties may be imposed not only on the enterprise but also on the individual acting on its behalf. The penalties are severe and the amount of fines depend on the type of offence.
Examples of sanctions imposed on enterprises for offences, even if committed unintentionally:
Examples of sanctions imposed on individuals acting on behalf of enterprises for offences even if committed unintentionally:
The Unfair Competition Act provides, among others, for civil liability for committing an unfair competition act as well as criminal liability for some acts. An effective compliance system in an enterprise is also a guarantee of compliance with competition law in its broad sense.
As penalties for breaching competition law are severe, it is necessary to spread knowledge about competition law both among entity’s management and among employees.
To minimise the risk of sanctions, it is recommended to introduce an internal competition law policy and hold regular training sessions in this regard. These actions will increase the effectiveness of the compliance system in every enterprise.
Jarosław Hein
Attorney at law (Poland), Tax adviser (Poland)
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