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Glossary brings together the key terms of the Kilpailuoikeus-wiki (Competition Law Wiki). Each full article (marked below) has its own page, reached directly by its link. Terms in the Glossary Terms section do not have an article of their own — they are defined directly on this page as a short, sourced paragraph. The definitions in this glossary are based mainly on the Finnish Terminology Centre's (Tieteen termipankki) legal glossary and on materials published by law firms — in particular Fondia.

Full Articles (A–Z)

• Abuse of a Dominant Market Position (FI) — Pricing, discriminatory and exclusionary practices by which a dominant undertaking infringes the Competition Act.
• Appeals in Competition Matters (FI) — Rights of appeal to the Market Court and the Supreme Administrative Court against FCCA and Commission decisions.
• Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition (FI) — Price fixing, market sharing and other serious restrictions between competitors.
• Competition Law Assessment of Mergers and Remedies (FI) — The SIEC test and structural/behavioural remedies.
• Competition Law Clauses in M&A Agreements (FI) — Risk allocation, conditionality and gun-jumping protection in the sale and purchase agreement pending regulatory clearance.
• Cross-Border Competition Law Mandates and ECN Cooperation (FI) — Cooperation and division of competence between the authorities of several member states in the ECN.
• Dominant Market Position (FI) — Assessing market power, market shares and other indicators of dominance.
• The EU FDI Screening Regulation and Cross-Border Cooperation (FI) — The cooperation mechanism under the EU's FDI screening regulation and member states' notification obligations.
• The EU Merger Regulation and the One-Stop-Shop Principle (FI) — The scope of the Merger Regulation (139/2004), turnover thresholds and the Commission's exclusive jurisdiction.
• The FCCA's Investigative Powers and Dawn Raids (FI) — The Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority's inspection powers and companies' rights during an investigation.
• Fines in Competition Law (FI) — How fines are determined, the statutory cap, and parent-company liability.
• Fundamentals and Sources of Competition Law (FI) — The relationship between the Competition Act and Articles 101–102 TFEU, key concepts and the competent authorities.
• Fundamentals of Merger Control and the Notification Obligation (FI) — Turnover thresholds, the notification obligation and the standstill obligation.
• Fundamentals of Public Procurement and Its Interface with Competition Law (FI) — The objectives of the Procurement Act and its points of contact with restrictions of competition.
• Immunity from and Reduction of Fines (the Leniency Programme) (FI) — The conditions for full immunity and reduction for reporting a cartel.
• Information Exchange Between Competitors (FI) — When information exchange turns from lawful market intelligence into a prohibited concerted practice.
• Merger Control Procedure: Review Phases and Timeline (FI) — From notification to decision: the FCCA's review phases and deadlines.
• Private Damages Claims in Competition Law (FI) — The right of action and burden of proof under the Competition Damages Act (1077/2016).
• Procurement Procedures and Threshold Values (FI) — Types of procedure under the Procurement Act and the EU and national threshold values from 1 January 2026.
• Relevant Markets (FI) — Defining product and geographic markets using the SSNIP test in competition law assessment.
• Screening of Foreign Acquisitions in Finland (FI) — The national FDI Act 172/2012 and the forthcoming Investment Screening Act.
• Self-Correction and Appeals in Procurement Matters (FI) — A contracting authority's self-correction, appeal to the Market Court, and sanctions for an unlawful procedure.
• State Aid and Its Interface with Competition Law (FI) — Articles 107–108 TFEU, the GBER and de minimis aid from an M&A perspective.
• Vertical Agreements and Block Exemption Regulations (FI) — The VBER (EU) 2022/720 and the competition law assessment of distribution agreements.

Glossary Terms

Cartel

A cartel is an agreement or concerted practice between two or more undertakings, the purpose of which is to coordinate the undertakings' competitive conduct on the market or to influence relevant parameters of competition, such as prices, output, market sharing or customers. Cartels restrict undertakings' competitive options without generating efficiencies or creating any new offering for customers, which is why they are regarded as the most serious type of competition law infringement.

See also: Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition

Collective Boycott

A collective boycott is coordination between undertakings operating at the same level of production or distribution by which they refrain from doing business with a particular trader. In practice this may involve an explicit refusal to supply or purchase, or the setting of prices and terms that, in effect, prevent the target undertaking from carrying on its business. A boycott may be directed at a competing undertaking directly or, indirectly, at its customers and suppliers, and it is treated as comparable in severity to other horizontal cartel restrictions.

See also: Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition

Competition Law Damages

Competition law damages (kilpailunrajoitusvahinko) is the harm caused by a cartel or by abuse of a dominant market position. An injured party is entitled to full compensation for the harm suffered, including costs incurred, loss of profit, and direct and indirect financial loss, and the compensation carries interest under the Interest Act (633/1982) from the date the harm arose.

See also: Private Damages Claims in Competition Law

Competition Law Invalidity

Competition law invalidity means that the terms of an agreement that infringes the cartel prohibition or the prohibition on abuse of a dominant market position cannot be applied or enforced. Invalidity also extends to terms that are contrary to a prohibition or order issued by the Market Court or the competition authority. In practice, this means, for example, that a party to a prohibited price cartel cannot claim contractual damages from its contract partner for breach of the cartel clause, because the clause itself is void from the outset.

Competitive Neutrality

Competitive neutrality means safeguarding a level playing field between the public and private sectors on the market. Chapter 4a of the Competition Act (948/2011) requires that economic activity carried on by a municipality, the state or another public body must, as a rule, be corporatised, priced on market terms — covering costs and reflecting a reasonable return on capital — and kept in separate accounts if the activity's revenue exceeds €40,000 a year. The FCCA supervises compliance and can intervene where a public body's market activity distorts competition to the detriment of private operators, for example through underpricing or cross-subsidisation.

See also: Competitive Neutrality

Compliance Programme

A competition law compliance programme means a company's internal system of training, monitoring and reporting aimed at preventing infringements of competition law before they occur. Such a programme typically includes staff training on prohibited forms of contact with competitors, an internal reporting channel for suspected infringements, and regular documentation and monitoring. Although the existence of a compliance programme does not, as such, remove a company's liability for a restriction of competition that has occurred, the Market Court's case law has emphasised that a genuinely functioning and observed programme can affect the mitigation of a fine and demonstrate the diligence of management.

Concerted Practice

A concerted practice is a form of coordination between undertakings restricting competition that has not reached the stage of an actual agreement, but by which undertakings knowingly substitute practical cooperation for the risks of competition. Both direct contact (such as calls and meetings) and indirect contact (for example through a trade association) can amount to a concerted practice if it has an effect on the parties' future market conduct. The concept extends the scope of the cartel prohibition to situations where a formal agreement cannot be shown, but the undertakings' conduct cannot otherwise be explained except by conscious coordination.

See also: Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition, Information Exchange Between Competitors

Exclusive Purchasing Agreement

An exclusive purchasing agreement is an agreement under which a reseller undertakes to obtain goods solely or predominantly from a particular supplier and to refrain from purchasing equivalent products from the seller's competitors. Such an agreement typically includes a non-compete obligation preventing the reseller from purchasing competing products either entirely or for more than 80% of its total purchases. An alternative arrangement is the so-called "English clause," which obliges the reseller to report a better offer and allows it to buy elsewhere only if the supplier cannot match the price. The competitive effect of the arrangement depends on its duration and market coverage.

See also: Vertical Agreements and Block Exemption Regulations

Fine (Competition Law)

A fine is a payment imposed on the state as a consequence of a prohibited restriction of competition or of implementing a merger in breach of competition law, imposed by the Market Court on a proposal from the FCCA (or by the Commission at EU level). The amount of the fine is set through an overall assessment that takes into account the nature, extent, gravity, reprehensibility and duration of the infringement, and it may not exceed 10% of the worldwide aggregate turnover of the undertaking involved in the infringement — or of the entire group. This maximum amount is calculated from the turnover of the financial year preceding the FCCA's proposal for a fine or the Market Court's/Supreme Administrative Court's decision imposing the fine — not from the turnover of the year in which the infringement ended.

See also: Fines in Competition Law

Gun Jumping

Gun jumping means implementing a merger before the competition authority has approved it, or even before the transaction has been notified to the authority. The infringement can be procedural (the transaction is carried out without notification) or substantive (the transaction is carried out after notification but before clearance, in breach of the standstill obligation). In practice, gun jumping does not mean only a transfer of ownership before clearance, but also lesser, premature coordination of commercial conduct between the parties. The European Commission has significantly tightened its stance: fines have risen from a few tens of thousands of euros (Samsung/AST, 1998) to hundreds of millions (Altice, €124.5 million, 2018), and the Commission has imposed separate fines for both failure to notify and breach of the standstill obligation arising from the same conduct.

See also: Competition Law Clauses in M&A Agreements, Merger Control Procedure: Review Phases and Timeline

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index is a measure of market concentration calculated by summing the squares of the market shares (as percentages) of all undertakings operating on the market. The index ranges from zero (perfect competition) to ten thousand (monopoly). Under the Commission's guidelines, the Commission is unlikely to identify horizontal competition concerns where the post-merger HHI is below 1,000, or where the HHI is between 1,000 and 2,000 and the merger-induced change (the "delta") is below 250 points, or where the HHI exceeds 2,000 and the delta is below 150 points, absent special circumstances. In practice, the HHI functions as a first screen for identifying transactions that are unlikely to require a more in-depth competitive analysis.

See also: Competition Law Assessment of Mergers and Remedies

Information Exchange

Information exchange means coordination between undertakings to exchange information relevant to how the market functions. Information exchange can improve market efficiency, for example by reducing storage costs or helping undertakings respond to fluctuations in demand, but it can also restrict competition if it reveals competitors' strategies — particularly on pricing. The assessment is always case-specific and depends on factors such as the nature and precision of the information exchanged, the frequency of the exchange, and the structure of the market.

See also: Information Exchange Between Competitors

Leniency

Leniency means the waiver or reduction of competition law fines where an undertaking that took part in a cartel or other restriction of competition discloses the prohibited arrangement to the authority or assists in investigating it. Immunity or a reduction is typically conditional on the applicant providing information that enables a dawn raid to be carried out or otherwise significantly advances the investigation, ending its participation in the restriction, cooperating throughout the investigation, and not destroying evidence or tipping off other participants.

See also: Immunity from and Reduction of Fines (the Leniency Programme)

Market Division

Market division is an agreement or other arrangement between undertakings to divide markets, customers or sources of supply among competitors. It is a cartel restriction where competitors at the same level of production or distribution divide market shares, territories or customers among themselves — such an arrangement is regarded as harmful to consumers because it typically raises prices and narrows choice. By contrast, an exclusive territorial arrangement between parties operating at different levels (e.g. manufacturer–distributor) is, in principle, assessed as a vertical restriction, which may also have pro-competitive effects through distribution efficiencies.

See also: Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition

Parental Liability

Parental liability is an EU competition law principle under which a parent company can be held jointly and severally liable for a competition infringement committed by its subsidiary if the parent has exercised decisive influence over the subsidiary. Where a parent company wholly or almost wholly owns its subsidiary, the exercise of decisive influence is presumed (a rebuttable presumption), and the competition authority need not separately demonstrate actual interference in the subsidiary's commercial conduct. The principle is central to due diligence in mergers and group structures, since it can extend fine risk to the entire group, including prior competition infringements of an acquired target company.

See also: Fines in Competition Law

Passing-On Defence

The passing-on defence is a limitation-of-liability argument used in competition law damages proceedings, under which a defendant may argue that the claimant has passed on, wholly or in part, a price increase caused by the infringement to its own customers further down the distribution chain, and has therefore not itself suffered equivalent harm. The EU Damages Directive (2014/104/EU) expressly permits the use of this defence but places the burden of proving the pass-on on the defendant. The defence is particularly relevant in claims brought by so-called indirect purchasers, where the extent to which a price increase has been passed down the distribution chain is assessed.

See also: Private Damages Claims in Competition Law

Price Fixing

Price fixing means coordination between undertakings to determine selling or purchase prices, or the basis on which they are set. Price fixing is, under both Article 101 TFEU and section 5 of the Competition Act (948/2011), one of the most serious and clearly prohibited restrictions of competition: both direct price agreements and recommended prices and coordinated discount practices are prohibited, and the coordination need not result in a formal agreement to be unlawful.

See also: Cartels and Horizontal Restrictions of Competition

Resale Price Maintenance (RPM)

Resale price maintenance (RPM) is a price or consideration set by a supplier of goods that a reseller must apply when selling or leasing the goods. Setting minimum or fixed resale prices is treated as a serious restriction of competition subject to the cartel prohibition (a so-called hardcore restriction that falls outside the protection of the block exemption regulation). A supplier may, instead, recommend a price if the reseller is not obliged to follow it, or set a maximum price if both parties' market shares remain below 30%.

See also: Vertical Agreements and Block Exemption Regulations

Selective Distribution

Selective distribution is an arrangement in which a supplier undertakes to sell goods only to distributors selected on the basis of specified criteria, and those distributors undertake not to sell those goods or services to unauthorised distributors. The system is typically used for the distribution of complex products or products with high brand value, and its competition law assessment depends, among other things, on whether the selection is based on qualitative or quantitative criteria and whether the market-share thresholds of the block exemption regulation are met.

See also: Vertical Agreements and Block Exemption Regulations

SIEC Test

The SIEC test ("significant impediment to effective competition") is the assessment criterion under Article 2(2)–(3) of the EU Merger Regulation (139/2004), under which a concentration must be declared incompatible with the internal market if it would significantly impede effective competition in the internal market or a substantial part of it, in particular by creating or strengthening a dominant position. The test replaced the earlier, pure dominance test in the 2004 reform of the Merger Regulation because it also captures so-called non-coordinated effects in oligopolistic markets, without requiring any single undertaking to reach a formal position of dominance. Finland's national merger test under the Competition Act follows the same principle.

See also: Competition Law Assessment of Mergers and Remedies

Sources

Lainsäädäntö ja lähteet tarkistettu 6.9.2026.