Copenhagen Economics has interviewed the Estonian Competition Authority (ECA) and five prominent Estonian competition law practitioners for the chapter on Estonia. The findings show that the role of economics in Estonian competition law is limited, and the competition authority’s approach to investigating cases has generally remained unchanged over recent years.

ECA operates both as a tariff regulator and a competition law enforcer, which has resulted in a relatively high number of excessive pricing cases. Although the upcoming implementation of the ECN+ Directive is expected to result in considerable changes in the Estonian Competition Act, the details remain unknown until half a year prior to its implementation. As a result of the ECN+ Directive, the criminalisation of cartels is expected to cease. This should reduce the burden of proof in cartel cases, which will potentially make economic arguments more appealing in court. Consequently, we expect to see more cartel investigations in the future.

Learn more about this story in GCRC’s Enforcer Hub’s chapter on Estonia, written by Anssi Kohonen, Kalle Kantanen and Heidi Partanen.

An extract from GCR’s Enforcer Hub. The whole resource is available here

For further information, please contact Anssi Kohonen