Denmark - International Encyclopaedia of Laws

104–110Part I, Ch. 2, Scope of ApplicationDanish Competition Authority’s website, the legislation is under revision. However,it is expected that Denmark will simply follow the Commission’s approach.III. Cooperatives: Now Repealed104. A previously applicable executive order (Executive Order 1029 of 1997)to the Danish Competition Act contained specific provisions concerning cooperatives(or co-ops). Under section 6 of the Competition Act, agreements and concertedpractices that were formed or occurred internally within a group ofcompanies were exempted from the prohibition on restrictive agreements.105. Agreements between undertakings organized in a co-op were to be deemedinternal agreements and insofar as they were necessary in order to secure the operationof the undertaking, were exempted from the prohibition in section 6.106. The executive order on co-ops was repealed on 1 July 2005. The Commission’svertical and horizontal block exemptions (as enacted into the Danish legislation)and the Commission’s guidelines cover the area.§3. STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISES AND PUBLIC UTILITIESI. No Special Danish Provisions107. This particular area of Danish law is largely the same as EU competitionlaw. There are no special or unique provisions.108. As a starting point, state-owned enterprises and public utilities are governedby the same rules as all other types of companies – the Competition Act. Section2 of the Competition Act is widely framed to catch all types of businessenterprises, including state-owned enterprises and public utilities. Even so, a fewsectors are still governed by slightly different rules.II. Postal Service109. Denmark’s postal service sector has traditionally taken the form of amonopoly. Even today the sector still retains some of the characteristics of amonopoly, and it cannot be said that competition is entirely free.110. The state-owned company Post Danmark is responsible for and performsthe Danish postal service. 1 Post Danmark is exclusively licensed to distributecertain categories of domestic letters. While the exclusive license previouslyextended to the entire postal service sector, the field of application has been reduced38 – Denmark Competition Law – (February 2011)