The main change restricts use of foreign indicators in pricing to when the negative consequences indicated in Part 1 Article 10 of Federal Law No. 135-FZ of 26.07.2006 “On Protection of Competition” (the Competition Protection Law) or the possibility of these are excluded within the Russian Federation. In other words, according to the antimonopoly authority, a reference to foreign stock exchange and OTC indicators no longer, in itself, precludes the risk of a monopolistically high price being established. The new wording also stipulates that a dominant business entity must prioritise supplies to the domestic market and take into account the balance of supply and demand on this market.
This is the third revision of the Principles of Analysis, the following being worth noting:
- date of change: the new Principles of Analysis were published on the FAS Russia website in March 2022 but are dated December 2021 so are highly likely to have already been applied by the antimonopoly service in earlier cases;
- reference to the internal nature of the document: the Principles of Analysis specifically emphasise that they were developed for use by FAS employees. Even so, this does not, in our view, mean that business entities may not refer to this document, even if they take as different position from the antimonopoly authority.
Despite the seemingly small number of changes, we believe that the new version of the Analysis Principles will require many companies to adjust their current pricing policies.