81^st session of the Council of Competition of Bosnia and Herzegovina was held in Sarajevo on 11^th  February 2014 with the following adopted:

Decision rejecting as unfounded joint Request to institute proceedings of the undertakings ” Blicnet ” d.o.o. Banja Luka , ” TXTV ” d.o.o. Tuzla and ” Elta Kabel ” d.o.o. Doboj against economic entities ” FOX International Channels Bulgaria & Balkans ” , Sofia , Bulgaria , ” Viasat World Ltd ” , London, United Kingdom , and ” Discovery Communications Ltd . ” , London, UK , to establish the existence of prohibited agreements and abuse of dominant position in the relevant market .

  As  the reason for the request to institute proceedings Applicants have mentioned  that they concluded agreements on the distribution of TV programs with economic entities ” FOX International” , ” Viasat  World ” and ” Discovery Communications ” , which gave them the right to audit the number of subscribers of cable operators , but they believe that these undertakings have tried to carry out compliance audits because they are scheduled for the same day in all the applicants and that the audit was announced only for them , but not for other cable operators in Bosnia and Herzegovina , and that this treatment – joint audit is a prohibited agreement , pursuant to the provisions of the Competition Act.

Also, the request stated that the economic entities “FOX International”, “Viasat World” and “Discovery Communications” abused its dominant position on the market of broadcasting and sales of specialized documentary TV programs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  During the proceedings, Council of Competition analyzed the provisions of the Agreement on the distribution of TV programs and concluded that the right to audit (eg, the number of subscribers) was determined therein. Consequently, the audit can not represent an additional obligation whose nature and commercial usage is not related to the subject of the agreement, and it does not represent an infringement of the provisions of the Competition Act, and that the audit does not place applicants at a disadvantage compared to its competition since it was done with other cable operators as well.

 Also, allegations of  the applicant on a joint audit are unfounded because the economic entities against whom proceedings have been initiated separately concluded agreement on the audit with the audit company, which precisely defined rights and duties of auditors ( including the time of the audit , trade secret , etc. ) .

 Furthermore, the Applicant allegations on the abuse of a joint dominant position , are unfounded since the economic entities ” FOX International” ” Viasat World ” and ” Discovery Communications ” in the relevant market operate independently , and their combined market share cannot be calculated, and consequently their joint dominant position not can be established.

 Also , it was found that economic entities ” FOX International” , ” Viasat World ” and ” Discovery Communications ”  individually do not have dominant position in the relevant market , taking into account their market shares in relation to the shares of other suppliers of documentary programs operating in the relevant market in Bosnia and Herzegovina .

Public Relations Department                                                                                                                                               From the Office  of President of Council of Competition