The Competition Act and State Aid
The Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications is responsible for general policies and legislation concerning competition.
The Competition Act
The Swedish Competition Act is modelled on the EU competition rules. It thus prohibits cooperation between companies that significantly limits or distorts competition. Examples of prohibited activities are price collaboration and market sharing between companies. The Act also prohibits companies with a dominant position on the market from abusing their strong position. It also includes provisions on the control of mergers between undertakings.
A new Competition Act came into force on 1 November 2008. A number of changes have been made in order to make the legislation clearer and more effective. For instance, in terms of penalties, a disqualification order (trading prohibition) has been introduced and may be applied to individuals who have participated in cartels.
Authority
The Swedish Competition Authority is a state authority working in order to safeguard and increase competition. To achieve this, the Authority monitors compliance with the Competition Act and the Public Procurement Act, provides proposals for changes to rules and provides other measures to eliminate obstacles to effective competition, as well as builds up and disseminates knowledge on competition issues.
State aid
As part of the responsibilities in the competition field, the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications is also dealing with European Community rules on state aid. This includes responsibility for notification of Swedish state aid to the Europan Commission according to article 88.3 of the EC Treaty (except aid in the agricultural and fisheries sectors). Other tasks performed are monitoring and reporting of Swedish state aid and providing guidance and advise for implementation of the EC rules.
Within the Ministry, abovementioned state aid matters are primarly dealt with by the Division for Market and Competition.
Swedish application of the GBER
Swedish application of Commission Regulation (EC) 800/2008 of 6 August 2008 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the common market in application of article 87 and 88 of the Treaty (General Block Exemption Regulation) - please see external links for full text versions of the measures concerned.
Ministry responsible
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