Main Developments in Competition Law and Policy 2025 ‒ Slovakia

The year 2025 marked a rather calm period for Slovak competition law enforcement. The Antimonopoly Office (AMO) continued to demonstrate its commitment to enforcement while also publishing new guidelines and reports related to the longer-term sectoral inquiries.

The AMO’s enforcement activity was stable. In the area of anticompetitive agreements, the AMO issued a landmark decision penalizing a contracting authority for the first time for its role in facilitating bid-rigging, as well as first fine for the no-poaching agreement. Abuse of dominance enforcement yielded multiple decisions across diverse sectors, including online real estate advertising, television broadcasting, waste management, and bus station operations. The AMO also advanced its merger control framework by launching a public consultation on introducing call-in powers for sub-threshold concentrations. The key developments and policy initiatives from the past year are summarized below.

1.     Anticompetitive Agreements

In 2025, the AMO issued several decisions regarding anti-competitive agreements. The AMO maintained a focus on cartels, issuing decisions and discontinuing one investigation due to expiry of the statutory time limit for imposing fines.

Horizontal agreements

Bid rigging in robotics sector and coffee technology case

In 2025, the AMO issued a notable first-instance decision concerning bid-rigging in the robotics sector and discontinued proceedings in another bid-rigging case due to expiry of the statutory time limit for imposing fines.

• The AMO issued a first-instance decision imposing total fines of EUR 360,000 on four undertakings for bid-rigging in a public procurement procedure in the robotics sector. Notably, the AMO also penalized the contracting authority itself for actively participating in the manipulation of the tender. This marks the first time the AMO has imposed such a penalty on a contracting authority. Three undertakings, including the contracting authority, were blacklisted from public procurement procedures for three years. One undertaking received only a one-year blacklisting due to its settlement with the AMO, while another undertaking was fully exempted from blacklisting for cooperating under the leniency program and providing evidence of the infringement. The decision remained subject to appeal. The decision is significant for several reasons. It marks the first instance where the AMO penalized a contracting authority for facilitating a cartel. The AMO emphasized that undertakings who are not competitors of the tender participants may also be held liable for facilitating anticompetitive agreements, facing both fines and blacklisting from public procurement procedures.

• Another first in the AMO’s decision-making practice is its first decision addressing competition law concerns on the labour market in Slovakia. In this case, the AMO fined the Slovak Association of Fuel Industry and Trade EUR 10,000 for adopting a provision in its Code of Ethics that prohibited its members from poaching or hiring employees from one another. The decision is currently first‑instance and the association has likely appealed. The relatively low level of the fine reflects the fact that this is the first enforcement case of its kind in Slovakia. Nevertheless, the decision signals increased scrutiny of labour‑market conduct.

• The AMO discontinued proceedings concerning suspected bid-rigging in a tender for coffee roasting technology due to the expiry of the four-year statutory time limit for imposing fines. The proceedings were initiated in November 2020 against four undertakings suspected of coordinating bids in a tender. While the AMO issued a first-instance decision in November 2023, the AMO Council annulled it in June 2024 and returned the case for reconsideration. During the renewed proceedings, the AMO also included the contracting authority as a suspect. However, the statutory time limit  expired in November 2024 before the AMO could issue a new decision. This case was governed by the stricter rules under the previous Competition Act, which required a final decision within four years of initiating proceedings – a limitation that no longer exists under the current legislation.

2.     Abuse of Dominance

In 2025, the AMO issued several abuse of dominance decisions and initiated new investigations.

The AMO issued the following notable decisions:

• The AMO imposed a fine of EUR 675,200 on United Classifieds for abusing its dominant position in online real estate advertising services. The AMO identified two infringements: (i) starting from 2020, the company offered advertising on its three main real estate portals only as a bundled package, without allowing customers to select individual portals, which amounted to the unfair commercial conditions, and (ii) from 2020 to early 2022, the company restricted technical access to its portals for real estate agencies using competing software solutions, while preferring its own software. The AMO also imposed an obligation requiring the company to cease the infringing conduct within 90 days of the decision becoming final. The decision remains subject to appeal. Notably, this matter is also subject to parallel civil litigation, where courts had previously declined to grant interim measures pending the AMO's decision.

In 2025, the AMO Council also upheld first instance decisions:

• Waste management. The AMO Council upheld a fine of EUR 180,200 imposed on Brantner Fatra for abusing its dominant position by charging the cities of Martin and Vrútky significantly higher prices for landfilling mixed municipal waste compared to other municipalities from February 2019 to December 2022, without objective justification. The decision became final in July 2025.

• Bus station operators. The AMO Council upheld two first-instance decisions imposing fines of EUR 218,500 and EUR 34,000 on transport facility operators for abusing their dominant positions by charging excessively high fees to bus carriers for access to bus stations in several Slovak cities from 2019 to 2025. The AMO found that revenues exceeded costs by tens to hundreds of percent without objective justification. The decisions became final in September and October 2025, respectively. Both undertakings were also ordered to cease the infringing conduct within 60 days.

The AMO also closed one investigation without imposing fines and initiated several new proceedings:

• The AMO closed its investigation into Ticketportal, the largest ticket seller in Slovakia, concerning restrictions on secondary ticket sales. Following the initiation of the investigation, Ticketportal proactively amended its general terms and conditions to remove the prohibition on resale of non-personalized tickets. The AMO acknowledged the company's cooperative approach and closed the investigation without imposing fines.

• In April 2025, the AMO initiated proceedings against one of the major commercial broadcasters (TV Markíza) for suspected abuse of dominance in connection with licensing of TV archive and other non-linear television services. The AMO suspects that the broadcaster may be imposing unreasonable commercial conditions on retransmission operators, potentially increasing their costs.

• In July 2025, the AMO expanded proceedings against TV Markíza for suspected abuse of dominance in connection with restrictions on advertisement skipping when viewing archived content. And in August 2025, the AMO initiated proceedings in the same matter against another commercial broadcaster – TV JOJ. The AMO suspects that both broadcasters may be imposing unfair commercial conditions on retransmission operators by requiring them to implement advertisement skipping restrictions, which subsequently reduced viewing flexibility for consumers. Both broadcasters face potential fines of up to 10% of their worldwide turnover. The similar case is also pending before the Czech watchdog.

3.     Merger Control

In 2025, the AMO made significant progress on introducing call-in powers for sub-threshold transactions, while also continued imposing fines for gun-jumping.

Call-in powers – public consultation

The AMO launched a public consultation on introducing call-in powers for sub-threshold mergers, with the consultation period running until December 2025. Under the proposed mechanism, the AMO would be able to require notifications that are not captured by the standard notification thresholds but raise competition concerns. The call-in would include both a qualitative condition (competition concerns suggesting a potential significant impediment to effective competition) and a quantitative condition (a supplementary turnover threshold lower than the current general thresholds). The AMO would have six months from completion or implementation of concentration to issue a call-in request. The AMO expects to use this power sparingly, acquisitions of potential competitors, and roll-up strategies in sectors such estimating only one to two cases per year. The mechanism would target horizontal, ecosystem and roll-up acquisitions, as in media, healthcare, and IT sectors. Called-in transactions would require full notification (not simplified procedure) and would be subject to a standstill obligation following the call-in request. The AMO considered but rejected alternative approaches, including transaction value thresholds (used in Germany and Austria), sector-specific thresholds, and ex post intervention under the Towercast doctrine.

Gun-jumping in the gambling sector

In 2025, the AMO imposed a fine of EUR 428,000 on undertakings in the gambling sector for implementing a concentration prior to its notification and clearance by the AMO (gun-jumping). The undertakings voluntarily notified the concentration, cooperated with the AMO, and reached a settlement. This decision follows a broader pattern of gun-jumping enforcement by the AMO. In 2024, the AMO imposed its historically highest fine on a single undertaking for gun-jumping, namely EUR 21 mil. in the bakery sector. Notably, gambling case resulted in conditional clearance while in the bakeries case, the AMO sought to prohibit the original transaction. This suggests that the AMO tends to deal with gun-jumping in transactions that also raise substantive competition concerns during the assessment.

4.     Procedural matters and sector inquiries

In 2025, the AMO issued a decision on obstruction of dawn raids, marking the first such case in approximately ten years. The AMO imposed a fine of EUR 70,000 on SINOP ALFA for refusing to submit a mobile phone during an unannounced dawn raid at its business premises. The dawn raid was part of an investigation into a suspected cartel in the air conditioning, refrigeration, and heat pump services sector.

The AMO also concluded two long-term sector inquiries:

• Labour markets. The AMO published a comprehensive economic report analysing the competitive environment of the Slovak labour market. The report concluded that while the degree of concentration of economic activity in most sectors is low with sufficient competition, less developed regions face high levels of concentration when geographic aspects and types of occupations are taken into account. The study identified a significant negative correlation between labour market concentration and wages, meaning that high levels of local concentration negatively affect wage levels. The report presented far-reaching policy recommendations covering both economic policy (prioritizing infrastructure development and state aid in underserved regions, strengthening active labour market policies) and competition policy, calling for innovative approaches to relevant market definition and merger assessment in labour markets.

• Foodstuff. In the second half of 2025, the AMO published several long-awaited outputs from its sector inquiries into the food sector, including a general report on the functioning of the food supply chain and a specific report examining whether geographic restrictions on supplies occur in the market. While the reports did not identify significant competition concerns, the food sector remains a priority for the AMO, as evidenced by dawn raids conducted in the bakery sector at the end of 2025.

5.     Outlook for 2026

A calmer enforcement period is not anticipated for 2026. The AMO leadership commenced its term in 2023 and was particularly active in conducting dawn raids and initiating cartel proceedings around the turn of 2023 and 2024. Given the three-year statutory time limit  for issuing decisions, it is reasonable to expect that 2026 will yield the first substantive outcomes of the current leadership's enforcement efforts in the area of anticompetitive agreements. Beyond enforcement, the AMO may also face an existential institutional challenge, as the government is reportedly considering merging the AMO with the Public Procurement Office into a single competition authority, following the model adopted in the Czech Republic. Against this backdrop, 2026 is expected to be a particularly eventful year for Slovak competition law.