The research project was completed in 2007 on the basis of a contract concluded between the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection and the Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw.
The main goal of the project was to carefully analyse the essence and the scope of existing EU and Polish block exemptions in order to give an academic answer to the question if there is a need to issue block exemptions replacing those expiring in 2007.
The results of the project confirmed a necessity for a continued use of block exemptions in Poland. This affirmative answer came from an extensive analysis of the following issues: (1) implications for Poland deriving from changes in EU law; (2) experiences from Polish and EU case law; (3) regulations adopted in particular EU Member States, mainly new Member States from Central Europe; (4) economic reasons of competition policy, with a special concern to economization of this policy. The resulting research reports concerned not only legal but also economic aspects of antitrust assessment of multilateral co-operation between companies.
The key conclusion from the research stage of the project justified a shift to a practical stage and preparation of individual draft regulations for the consideration of the Polish Council of Ministers. The project closed with two research reports as well as exemplary draft regulations of the Council of Ministers exempting four categories of multilateral co-operation from the prohibition of competition restricting agreement (R&D and specialisation agreements, vertical agreements, technology transfer agreements and agreements between insurance companies).
The research reports became the basis for a collective book published in the ‘Antitrust and Regulatory Studies and Monographs’ series. A. Jurkowska, T. Skoczny (eds), Block exemptions from the prohibition of restrictive agreements in the EC and Poland, University of Warsaw Faculty of Management Press, Warsaw 2008.
