By Srdjana Petronijević and Zoran Šoljaga
The Serbian Commission for Protection of Competition (the “Commission“) is taking steps to encourage the birth rate in Serbia, one of the country’s primary political objectives. Its contribution to achieve that objective is current antitrust investigation on the baby care product market, which could ultimately lead to a price decrease and reduction of costs of raising a child in Serbia. Almost 200 undertakings are under investigation for applying resale price maintenance (“RPM“), making this investigation the biggest in the history of Serbian antitrust enforcement.
This case was initiated ex-officio in April 2018, when the Commission raided Keprom d.o.o. and Yuglob d.o.o, two importers and distributors, and several retailers of baby care products. Following the dawn raid, the Commission opened four more investigations against the same distributors and their retailers (four cases in July) and, finally, on 22 September 2018, the Commission proudly announced that it had initiated investigations against 172 undertakings (the “Baby Products Investigation“).
