Competition fines in Lithuania: lower base, higher proportionality risk?

Lithuania has changed how competition fines are calculated. The maximum base fine drops from 10% to 5% of global turnover, but the same reform gives the Competition Council more flexibility to increase final fines where it considers a stronger penalty necessary. 

For businesses, the key question is not only how high the basic fine can be. It is whether the final amount will be proportionate to the competition law violation.  

The risk of disproportionate fines after the reform is particularly relevant for parent companies with smaller subsidiaries, and for businesses operating in digital markets, where sales revenue figures may be difficult to identify, very low or even zero. In both cases, the new rules on calculating fines may not necessarily lead to lower final fines but may make the outcome harder to predict. 

Dr Gintarė Surblytė-Namavičienė, Senior Associate at WALLESS, discusses the key aspects of the new fine calculation procedure in a Teisė PRO article (in Lithuanian) here: https://shorturl.at/Ttac9