Protection from unfair competition: legal regulation prospects

Abstract

Background. Systematization and unification of the rules of competition law should become an important direction of the further development of fair competition in Ukraine.
Analysis of recent research and publications.Issues of systematization of legislation, particularly in the sphere of competition have been researched in the works by: A. Bezukh, S. Valitov, A. Hratsianov, Y. Zhuryk, T. Kashanina, D. Kerimov, A. Chernelevska and others.
The aim of the article is to study problems of competition law systematization and to determine directions of its further enhancement.
Results. The complexity of competition legislation does not allow to choose only one type of systematization of its rules. It has been over ten years since the Civil and Commercial Codes of Ukraine entered into force, more than twenty years since regulation of competitive relations was introduced, but today most of the regulations contain flaws and contradictions, regulating social relations in various spheres of economic activity in different ways. Under such conditions the first task is to carry out monitoring of current legislation, identifying regulations that directly regulate the competitive relations and those rules that have an impact on the development and protection of fair competition. The depth of the assessment of the impact on competition should be proportional to the degree of potential negative consequences of a legal measure in terms of competition. The checklist to assess the impact on competition enables operatively review such measures to quickly identify from the large number of rules that are studied, to further assess those which can have potentially negative effects on competition. In the course of reviewing the current legislation for its impact on competition, all the legal norms, that can in any way affect the conditions of competition in the market, should be analysed. Further such an assessment should be made primarily to assess the impact of «new»legislation on competition and only in those cases where the corresponding legal norm includes the potential danger of an honest and fair competition in the market.
Conclusions. The main task of systematization and harmonization of competition law should be the enhancement of the legal principles to protect fair competition in Ukraine and the efficiency of the application of competition law by enforcement authorities.