Tiraspol, 3 February. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. The parliament has rejected the president's draft law «On protection of competition» which was submitted in the mode of legislative necessity. The bill provided for a ban on the abuse of dominant positions.
«The elaboration of this bill arose from the need to form modern antimonopoly legislation aimed at enhancing antimonopoly regulation, ensuring and promoting competition in the financial and commodity markets of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic and restricting monopolistic activities," said the chairman of the Price and Antimonopoly Committee, Vitaly Ulitka.
The draft law extends and clarifies the normative instruments of the antimonopoly legislation, provides a more elaborate regulation to monopolistic activities and unfair competition, extends a list of transactions requiring the antimonopoly regulator's approval, as well as the powers of the antimonopoly regulator regarding both the state control over the observance of antimonopoly laws and the examination of competition law infringements.
The imposition of disadvantages, selling goods at monopoly high prices or unjustified refusal to conclude a deal will infringe consumer rights: consumers will have to purchase goods at monopoly high prices or conclude bargains on unfavourable terms due to the lack of alternative, say the authors of the bill.
«In these circumstances it is inadmissible to fix monopoly prices in the domestic market, impose unfavourable terms on domestic consumers as such actions significantly affect the inflation rate, the population's solvency and the development of the Pridnestrovian economy on the whole," noted Ulitka.
To implement the provisions of this draft law, it was necessary to make amendments to some legal and standard acts.
It should be noted that this bill went before parliament almost a year ago, and a similar draft law was submitted to the Supreme Council by the government back in 2014 but has not been considered so far. That is why the president has decided to submit this bill in the mode of legislative necessity," clarifies Vitaly Ulitka.
Supreme Council speaker Vadim Krasnoselsky complained in the course of debate that too many draft laws were submitted in the mode of legislative necessity. Lawmaker Igor Buga, in turn, proposed to reject such bills without consideration in the event «there are no enough grounds to apply this procedure to them».
«To reject all 'necessity mode' bills in the way just proposed is nonsense. This has never happened in 25 years," said the president's plenipotentiary to the Supreme Council, Vladimir Bodnar.
According to cabinet members, it is the Constitutional Court's duty to interpret the legality of applying legislative modes, and MPs should consider the important bills submitted to them.
Despite the government's arguments, the draft law was rejected by a majority vote without any substantive discussion.
