On November 19, 2015, the Polish Competition Law Association held a workshop on “Implementation on Directive 2014/104/EU in Poland”.
During the first part of the workshop Judge Lis-Zarrias, – Chief Specialist Judge at the European Civil Law Department of the Polish Ministry of Justice and member of the work team appointed by the Civil Law Codification Committee to implement Directive 2014/104/EU, discussed the work of the Directive 2014/104/EU Implementation Team, including their time schedule, directions of implementation considered by the team and the areas of concern they identified to date.
As regards the second part of the workshop, Judge Lis-Zarrias agreed for the SPK members, led by Anna Gulińska, to take over. Each member discussed a selected issue and suggested concrete proposals on how to implement them into Polish law:
- disclosure of evidence and evidence discipline (Articles 5 and 8 of the Directive) was discussed by Anna Cudna-Wagner of Linklaters;
- access to files kept by antitrust authorities and evidence-related bans, including discrepancies between definitions (Art. 6 and 7 of the Directive) was presented by Anna Gulińska of Dentons;
- the issue of courts being bound by competition authority decisions (Art. 9 of the Directive) was briefed by Agata Ksionda of Allen & Overy; and
- joint and several liability and SME issues (Art. 11 of the Directive), was covered by Przemysław Wierzbicki of Wierzbicki Adwokaci i Radcowie Prawni.
Once each topic was discussed by working group's members, Judge Lis-Zarrias commented on the ideas suggested and briefed the participants on the directions considered by the Codification Committee. During the presentations delivered by members as well as at the end of the workshop participants engaged in a heated discussion on the implementation of the Directive, as well as opportunities and threats for undertakings.
The workshop attracted widespread interest, with such notable participants as, e.g. Ms. Bernadeta Kasztelan-Świetlik, Deputy Chairperson of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection.
By no means does the above put an end to our working group. We prepared a written summary of the issues discussed at the workshop and presented it to Judge Lis-Zarrias (see link below - letter available in Polish). Undoubtedly, the next step will involve preparing SPK’s position paper for the purpose of public consultations on the draft Act implementing the Directive, once published by the Ministry of Justice. We will keep you posted regarding further developments.
Please take a moment to have a look at the pictures from the meeting.