The decision-making body of the Competition Council (the CC) – the council, composed of the chairman of the CC and four members of the council – is obliged to make decisions on complaints received by the authority, initiating infringement proceedings, market surveillance or investigation of restrictive practices, or vice versa – to decide not to initiate proceedings due to insufficient evidence, but to provide a response to the complainant on the substance of the issue raised in the complaint.
Given the authority’s limited resources, the authority has the right to prioritise the submissions it receives and, in less serious infringements or where the affected market or the market participants involved in the infringement do not have a significant impact on the market, to remedy non-compliance with the law not by formally initiating and sanctioning proceedings, but by warning or negotiation procedures.
In 2023, the CC council made 40 decisions on the applications it received. After an in-depth examination of the complaints, in 39 cases a decision was made not to open an infringement case due to insufficient evidence, but the complainant was given a substantive response to the problem raised in the complaint. In one case, the alleged infringement complained about was remedied by the “Consult First” principle. Almost half (47%) of all complaints concerned alleged abuse of a dominant position, a third concerned alleged breaches of competitive neutrality, and 12% of all complaints concerned alleged prohibited agreements.
Read what complaints the CC received about alleged infringements of competition law and what methods were used to remedy non-compliance with the law in the summary prepared by the CC (available in Latvian).