Main Developments in Competition Law and Policy 2025 – Western Balkans

In this post, I make a high-level review of the main competition law developments in 2025 in five Western Balkan jurisdictions: Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Albania.

The level of competition law enforcement was not equal throughout the jurisdictions – for instance, while North Macedonian competition authority may have had the busiest year on record, it was a rather quiet year in Serbia and Montenegro. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania were somewhere in between –their competition authorities were not as busy as the North Macedonian one, but they did resolve or start some truly remarkable competition cases.

Serbia: A quiet year behind us

In Serbian antitrust, 2025 was relatively quiet, with only one new antitrust investigation and one earlier investigation completed.

When it comes to the new investigation, the Serbian competition authority launched proceedings against three Serbian companies for suspected bid rigging. The suspicion involves collusion in public procurement procedures for Serbia’s incumbent electricity producer (EPS). The companies allegedly coordinated bids by submitting offers with cascading prices and intentional calculation errors. When only these companies participated, those with errors refused corrections, leaving the highest-priced bid as the only valid option. In cases with other bidders, the lowest-priced participant from the group accepted corrections to become the most favorable. All three companies offered identical goods from the same manufacturer, indicating a restrictive agreement (cartel). The investigation has also involved dawn raids in three different locations.

In the closed investigation, The Serbian competition authority found that a Serbian company and KAPRO INDUSTRIES LTD from Israel had entered into a restrictive agreement that significantly limited competition in Serbia’s market for Kapro-brand tools. According to the authority, the Serbian company pressured foreign suppliers to stop supplying other Serbian distributors, effectively eliminating competition and leading to higher prices for buyers. Additionally, the watchdog established that the Serbian company’s contracts with customers included bans on selling below purchase price, further supporting price maintenance and constituting a separate competition violation. Due to the infringement, the authority fined both companies.

In the merger control sphere, a steady flow of merger filings has continued, owing to Serbia’s low merger filing thresholds. There were, however, no Phase II merger probes and no new gun-jumping investigations.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that in 2025 the Serbian competition authority completed one sector inquiry – concerning the provision of private healthcare services – and started another concerning the market for human medicines. This indicates the authority’s strong interest in health-related industries may herald stronger enforcement in that sector.

Montenegro: A record in the number of merger clearances

In Montenegro, the authority has remained focused on merger control, with at least 98 merger clearances issued in 2025. That is significantly more than around 70 clearances issued in 2024. This increase is not due to regulatory changes, since there was not any last year. Rather, it may simply be down to the fact that the companies triggering the Montenegrin filing thresholds are currently more active in M&A than they were the year before.

In the field of antitrust, the Montenegrin competition authority had a quiet 2025, with no new investigations and one new antitrust decision. In the decided case, the authority established that three Montenegrin companies had colluded in a public procurement procedure. The procurement procedure was related to agency services for booking hotel accommodation. The authority found the agreement null and void, but it did not impose any fines, as it does not have the power to do that under current legal framework.

That framework may be about to change, though. In an interview to a local newspaper, the head of the Montenegrin competition authority announced that changes to the Montenegrin Competition Act are on the cards. If adopted, the changes would empower the Montenegrin competition authority to impose fines for competition law infringements directly, instead of the current system in which fines are imposed by misdemeanor courts. Since this is not the first time that such changes are talked about, it remains to be seen whether they will actually materialize in 2026.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: A landmark conditional merger clearance

The news of the year in Bosnian competition law is a conditional merger clearance issued by the country’s competition authority. Conditional merger clearances in Bosnia and Herzegovina are not common and this might even be the first one.

By the decision, the Bosnian competition authority conditionally approved a concentration in the telecom sector, arising from BH Telecom’s acquisition of Telemach BH. The authority reached its decision following an in-depth analysis of the markets for internet, fixed telephony, and audiovisual services. The watchdog found that an unrestricted transaction could strengthen BH Telecom’s dominant position and therefore approved it subject to six binding remedies, including price caps, protection of existing subscriber contracts, information‑firewall obligations, limits on further acquisitions, restrictions on Telemach entering mobile services, and a partial divestment to reduce Telemach’s fixed internet market share. The implementation of these measures will be monitored by the competition authority and an independent auditor to safeguard effective competition.

As for other interesting issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, what continues to impede effective competition law enforcement in the country is ethnic-based decision-making. The issue is of such importance that it also found its way into the European Commission’s annual assessment of the progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina towards EU membership. Specifically, the European Commission noted that the functioning of the Bosnian competition authority is significantly impeded by ethnic-based decision-making and advised the law to be amended to revise voting procedures in line with the EU acquis. We may have to wait for such legislative changes, though, since any reform of the legal framework in Bosnia and Herzegovina is a notoriously time-consuming task.

North Macedonia: A record enforcement year?

The North Macedonian competition authority had a very busy 2025, in both merger control and antitrust sphere.

When it comes to merger control, in 2025 the North Macedonian authority received as many as 118 merger notifications. This is up from 103 notifications received in 2024, but also somewhere at the level of the multi-year average (for instance, in 2023 120 merger notifications were made in North Macedonia). This high level of merger cases is likely to remain, since there have been no changes to North Macedonia’s low merger filing thresholds.

Apart from reviewing notified mergers, the North Macedonian competition authority was also busy with pursuing gun-jumping violations, with as many as five gun-jumping investigations. In three of those investigations, the target acquired without prior merger clearance was a North Macedonian company – specifically, those cases were concerning North Macedonian companies Žito Karaorman AD Kičevo, RKM DOO Skopje, and Sofiјa Gradba DOO, respectively. Perhaps more interesting are the two gun-jumping cases involving foreign-to-foreign transactions.

In the first of the two cases, the North Macedonian competition authority found that the German company ALFER Beteiligungs GmbH had unlawfully acquired control over alfer‑aluminium GmbH, another German company, without complying with mandatory merger‑control rules. The company failed to notify the concentration in advance, despite being legally required to do so after signing the acquisition agreement. It also implemented the concentration before receiving clearance from the North Macedonian authority. As a result, the authority established two separate infringements: failure to notify and early implementation of a concentration, imposing on ALFER a single combined penalty for the two violations.

In the second case, the North Macedonian authority found that Yageo Corporation from Taiwan breached merger‑control rules in relation to its acquisition of USA-based KEMET Corporation. Yageo failed to notify the concentration in advance and implemented the merger prematurely, before obtaining clearance from the North Macedonian authority. Although the authority later approved the transaction, the procedural infringements remained – failure to notify and early implementation of the concentration. As a result, Yageo got a single combined penalty for the two violations.

Apart from pursuing gun-jumping violators, the North Macedonian competition authority was also busy on the antitrust front, with as many as six new infringement decisions. They concern various industries and are all factually interesting:

·         The authority fined Farma Trade DOOEL and AD Dr. Panovski a combined total of approximately EUR 1.78 million for bid-rigging and price-fixing in state insulin tenders between 2016 and 2018. This coordinated conduct was found to be a prohibited cartel that distorted market competition and caused significant financial damage to the national health budget.

·         It determined that ten insurance companies formed an illegal cartel by coordinating price changes for mandatory motor third-party liability insurance. Despite the market being partially regulated, the authority issued fines based on evidence of synchronized administrative surcharges and a joint media strategy that replaced competition with collusion.

·         It ruled that the public utility KJP Vodovod Kočani abused its dominant position by imposing an unfair contractual clause that waived its liability for damages during power outages. Although the utility was found in violation of competition law, it received a minimal fine after promptly removing the illegal provision from its supply agreement.

·         It fined two beverage distributors for maintaining a long-term agreement to divide products, customers, and territories. The authority rejected de minimis claims, ruling that market-sharing is a prohibited cartel activity regardless of the companies’ size or the agreement’s actual market effects.

·         It fined several major retailers and the Chamber of Commerce for forming a buyer cartel that had collectively boycotted supplier price increases. The authority classified the coordinated behavior as an illegal restriction by object, rejecting defense arguments regarding consumer benefits and imposing fines totaling approximately EUR 218,600 across all participants.

·         It fined the Association of Private Doctors of North Macedonia for adopting a prohibited price list that fixed fees for private medical services. This decision was classified as an illegal restriction by object that eliminated independent price competition among healthcare providers for over a decade.

To complete the picture of intense competition law enforcement, in 2025 the North Macedonian competition authority fined several companies for failure to provide requested information or for providing misleading information.

Albania: Farmers in the spotlight

In terms of the number of cases, the Albanian competition authority was mainly focused on merger control – in 2025, it received 46 new merger notifications, up from 29 last year. That is around the level of the multi-year average (in 2023, 50 merger notifications were filed in North Macedonia).

And while it was busy with dealing with that relatively high number of merger cases, the Albanian competition authority in 2025 also found time to interesting antitrust cases. First, it opened a preliminary investigation into Vodafone Albania SHA and One Albania SHA over potential anti‑competitive behavior in the retail mobile services market, following consumer complaints about price increases. Based on monitoring results, the Commission determined that the companies’ conduct may restrict competition., Further, it also opened a preliminary investigation into American Hospital SHA and International Hospital SHA after monitoring indicated they hold a dominant position in the hospital services market and may engage in potentially anti‑competitive practices.

In 2025, the Albanian competition authority also completed one significant antitrust investigation. Following a two‑year investigation into the wholesale fruit and vegetable market, the authority found that six collecting companies coordinated purchase prices and imposed excessive mark‑ups of up to 115%, harming farmers. The watchdog classified this coordinated behavior as a serious infringement of competition law, issuing fines and ordering the companies to display prices transparently and undergo one year of monitoring. It also issued recommendations to government ministries to reform the sector by reducing informality, improving legal frameworks, increasing price transparency, and strengthening protections for farmers nationwide.

Based on this, we can expect more investigations next year into products for which consumers are particularly price‑sensitive.