Antitrust in Montenegro: NCA Establishes Collusion of Telecom Operators

The representatives of the Montenegrin Agency for Protection of Competition have announced that the Agency has established the existence of collusion between three telecom operators in Montenegro – Montenegrin Telekom, One, and M-tel. The watchdog found that the three operators had colluded with respect to a simultaneous price increase for mobile phone services.

What was the investigation about?

In April this year, the Montenegrin competition watchdog opened an investigation against the three telecom operators, suspecting that they had colluded to fix the prices of certain mobile phone services. What was suspicious was that all three telecom operators had, at the same time, increased the minimum amount of a top-up for pre-paid users, raising it from 3 to 5 euros.

Interestingly, the complainant in this case was the Montenegrin Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services (the country’s  independent regulatory body in the field of electronic communications and postal services).

What was the NCA’s finding?

From what we know so far, the Montenegrin competition watchdog has established that the three telecom operators had indeed entered into a restrictive agreement, prohibited under the Montenegrin counterpart of Article 101 TFEU. We will know more once the NCA publishes at least the operative part of this decision (it generally does not publish the statement of reasons of its decisions, which is a pity).

What could the fines be?

According to the Montenegrin Competition Act, each party to a restrictive agreement can be fined between 1% and 10% of its annual turnover in the year preceding the infringement (in this case, in 2023). In the case of the telecom operators, the fine could amount to millions of euros.

NCA hints the new Competition Act will give it the power to impose fines

Currently, the Montenegrin NCA does not have the power to impose fines – upon establishing an infringement, the Agency can only refer the case to the misdemeanor court, and the court could then impose a fine. This is what the Agency has done in this case and, with respect to the fine, the ball will now be with the misdemeanor court.

This institutional setup when it comes to the imposition of antitrust fines may soon change, however.

At the press conference at which the infringement decision concerning the telecom operators was announced, a representative of the NCA hinted that the new Montenegrin Competition Act will give the NCA the power to impose fines for competition law infringements directly, without needing to go to the misdemeanor court. If this materializes, it will be one of the major shakeups of the Montenegrin antitrust landscape since the country adopted a modern competition law regime.

Key takeaways Under the current leadership, the Montenegrin NCA is extremely active in all areas of competition law enforcement – antitrust, merger control, and state aid. As a reminder, only a few weeks ago it was announced that the misdemeanor court has, following a gun-jumping by the Agency, imposed a gun-jumping fine of close to EUR 1 million. The changes that the new Montenegrin Competition Act will bring to the competition law enforcement regime in Montenegro could be far-reaching – one of the changes that seem to be on the cards is granting the NCA the power to impose fines.

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For more information, please contact Dr. Dragan Gajin, Head of Competition at Doklestic Repic & Gajin.