Hungary

Summary

From the time of introduction of the merger control regime into Hungarian legislation, the number of cases in which the parties to a transaction needed to apply for clearance by the Hungarian Competition Office (HCO) has been growing, although lately there has been a downturn in this trend due mainly to the financial crisis.

Following the accession of Hungary to the EU in 2004 several amendments of the Act LVII of 1996 on the Prohibition of Unfair Market Practices and Restriction of Competition (‘the Act’) were passed to ensure compliance of the Act with the EU competition rules and reflect practical experience gained by the HCO. That experience is reflected also in the case law of the HCO which has generated a series of interpretations of principle of the Act that make the behaviour of the HCO more predictable in case of mergers.

As will be discussed further below, under Hungarian competition law a pure merger (namely two irms merge to form a new company) is only one of several possible transactions which could trigger the obligation to obtain clearance from the HCO. Consequently, a merger is part of a broader concept deined as a concentration. Therefore, in this chapter we will be using the term merger only in its strict legal meaning and not as a synonym for that of concentration.