Interview with Ivana Halamová Dobíšková in Hospodářské noviny

What challenges should companies prepare for in the area of competition law?

Generally speaking, companies need to prepare for an increasing level of regulation. At the same time, however, there is a shift in perspective. In Brussels, there is growing discussion about the need to strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of European businesses. In connection with the new EU guidelines for assessing mergers and acquisitions, there has been discussion about being more willing to allow mergers that would not have been approved, or would have been approved only with difficulty, under the previous rules. However, it will be necessary to provide evidence that the transaction is genuinely beneficial to the EU market for specific reasons. Going forward, potential benefits may include a positive impact on employment or the environment, rather than competition alone. Whether this will ultimately result in fewer transactions being prohibited remains to be seen.

The Czech Office for the Protection of Competition is currently seeking a significant expansion of its powers. Do you consider these efforts justified?

There are two dimensions to this. Strengthening the powers of national competition authorities is a Europe-wide trend. For example, the “new competition tool” introduced by the proposed amendment, which is intended to address insufficiently effective competition in markets where there is no cartel formation or abuse of dominance, already exists in some form in countries such as Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom.

The same applies to the so-called call-in model, which allows authorities to review transactions retrospectively even after they have been completed, including transactions that do not meet the turnover thresholds for notification to competition authorities.

However, the Czech authority has come forward with a proposal that defines these tools in a relatively extensive manner. The initial draft emerged at a time when the fight against food prices was a major political issue, giving the authority considerable momentum to strengthen its powers. Although this amendment is still before Parliament, it is now generally considered effectively dead.

A second proposal followed some time later, based on similar principles. The new competition tool and the call-in model have been retained, albeit with some modifications. The proposal also introduces market monitoring and market investigation mechanisms. These are causing the greatest concern, as they could result in measures having a structural impact on companies, such as an obligation to divest assets.

As for the call-in model, the new proposal does not provide for a lower turnover threshold. As a result, acquisitions of target companies generating only minimal turnover could also potentially be subject to review. In such cases, investors will face considerable uncertainty as to whether the authority might intervene after the transaction has been completed.

Are these the only types of changes being proposed?

The proposed amendment also introduces the concept of administrative liability of individuals for cartel conduct. There is a positive shift here compared with the first proposal. The original draft was very strict and proposed penalising individuals even for anti-competitive vertical agreements. This has now been dropped.

Liability is intended to apply only to hard-core horizontal cartels, where managers could face a fine of up to CZK 10 million or a ban on holding certain positions.

Will dawn raids also be affected?

Yes. One of the proposed changes is that part of the review of business records would be moved from the premises where the investigation is taking place to the competition authority’s headquarters in Brno.

In practice, this could mean that the authority will seek to examine significantly more data, as its officials would no longer face the inconvenience of reviewing documents at a company’s premises on the other side of the country. A similar system operates in Poland, where this has increased companies’ legal costs associated with dawn raids.

Today, each official is ideally shadowed by a lawyer throughout the entire investigation, which usually lasts two days. If documents are instead transported to Brno, however, the process could easily be extended to several weeks, making it considerably more costly for businesses. It is also unclear how data protection will be ensured during the transfer and subsequent storage of the documents.

You mentioned that the rules for companies will become stricter. How should companies prepare for potential inspections so that they are not caught off guard?

Properly designed internal prevention and compliance systems are crucial. And compliance cannot simply mean having a two-page document with general rules sitting in a drawer that nobody has even read. Compliance must be tailored precisely to the individual company. Its size, operations and all relevant processes need to be taken into account. It must also reflect whether employees and management work at the company’s premises or remotely.

In fact, it is impossible to set up an effective compliance system properly without thoroughly understanding the company itself.

The second step is to establish an effective training system. Employees need to have a basic understanding that dawn raids exist and the circumstances in which they may take place, so that they know how to respond appropriately. But they should not only know what to do in a crisis situation. They also need to be able to identify potentially problematic competition-law situations — at least to some extent, they should know what may constitute a prohibited agreement and how to communicate with suppliers and customers in a way that ideally prevents a crisis from arising in the first place.

Is it actually possible to teach employees all this?

It is very difficult. Situations that are not entirely clear even to experts are becoming increasingly common, and a layperson may find it difficult to realise that they are doing something that could be problematic from a legal perspective.

A typical example is an agreement between companies not to poach each other’s employees. At first sight, this does not look like a classic cartel agreement, but practice shows that such arrangements are now frequently sanctioned in European countries, including the Czech Republic.

And what should a company do once an unexpected inspection by a competition authority actually arrives?

The initial response is extremely important. Everyone needs to know how to behave from the moment the officials arrive and the company is waiting for its legal counsel to arrive.

Nowadays, the IT department is the most critical element in terms of preparedness. Its head is usually one of the first people, together with management, whom the officials will ask to meet, because they need to understand how the company’s email client works, how access can be blocked, which cloud services the company uses and where its data is stored.

It is therefore essential to ensure that this person is thoroughly trained.

I am personally curious to see how the authority will respond in practice to the July judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, according to which an authority may not access private devices, or devices that are work-related but may also be used for employees’ private purposes, without prior authorisation from an independent body.

In effect, the judgment has given priority to the protection of privacy and personal data over the needs of an investigation. This represents a departure from the current situation in the Czech Republic, where no prior court authorisation was required.

Until the new practice becomes established, this could for some time be an advantage for companies that allow employees to use work devices for private purposes.

Ivana Halamová Dobíšková is a partner at BBH law firm and a recognised expert in competition, regulatory and EU law. She has long focused on complex competition law matters across a range of sectors, particularly energy, telecommunications, retail and life sciences. She has extensive experience representing clients in merger control proceedings, dawn raids conducted by the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition and the European Commission, as well as in private enforcement of competition law. Ivana is also a member of the Appeals Committee appointed by the Chairman of the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition for matters concerning competition protection and significant market power. She regularly ranks among the leading practitioners in international legal directories, including Chambers and Partners and the Lexology Index.

The interview was published in Hospodářské noviny on 1 September 2026.