GAP Against New Command for Autologging

According to GAP, the Administration Guide of the Ministry of Infrastructure for the Determination of Conditions and Procedures for Road Systems Homologist, issued for Public Consultation in 23,11.2017, contains elements that limit free competition and the market of other subjects.

“According to the Kosovo Constitution, Article 119, “Actions that limit free competition through the deployment or abuse of dominant positions, or practices that limit competitiveness, are prohibited. ” Kosovo is the only state in the region that has monopoly on automotive counterparts. At the end of 2008, the Ministry of Transport and PostTelecommunication (now the Ministry of Infrastructure) signed an exclusive contract with the company “Europalab” for the counterpart of cars registered for the first time in Kosovo. After the contract, the ministry has issued the company a authorisation for exclusive ten-year activities, 2009-2019. Before signing the contract and granting authorisation, the ministry has not announced tender procedures, thus avoiding competition, giving exclusive access to only one company. Instead of taking steps to remove the monopoly, the new Administrative Guide gives the existing company the right to decide on competitive subjects. According to Article 7 “, the ministry authorises the subject for counterpartship as a result of insufficient current capacity of service providers that influence the reasonable need resulting from capacity assessment and the study of feasibility to assess the need for authorisation of the new subject on the basis of the principle of equality of conditions for the expected subject...”. Article 7.4 says the ministry can allow the authorisation of a new subject if it turns out that the average use of capacities (of the existing subject) is more than 85% in the last three years and whether the feasibility study is acceptable to the existing subject and the potential contender. In the current version, this Administrative Guide makes it almost impossible to market a second subject, whereas it does not predict the possibility of having third or fourth subjects. While the governments of the region have opened the market authorising up to seven companies for counterparts, Kosovo aims to maintain monopoly in this field”, a GAP communique says.

The GAP Institute invites the Kosovo Competition Authority to interpret this Administrative Direction and recommends to the Government not to approve it in the current version.