The price increases in both food and non-food products on the retail markets in the former Yugoslavia have triggered increased public pressure, including consumer boycotts, while the national authorities are intensifying their monitoring of the sector, launching or threatening with antitrust investigations and seizing upon administrative measures.
In Serbia, the competition authority runs an ongoing investigation against four supermarket chains, following a sectoral analysis into the retail sector. According to the order launching proceedings, the authority observed that the retail prices of certain products monitored via price-comparison website were the same or similar among the retailers. The authority also noted that the retail market in Serbia experienced a value growth of 7.2% from April 2023 to March 2024 compared to the same period the previous year, while the recorded volumes experienced a slight decline of -1.9% in the same period and the annual inflation rate was 5%.
In Montenegro, the Agency for Protection of Competition has warned retailer chains that they are being closely monitored for potential price-fixing. This comes on the eve of two important legislative initiatives to enhance the framework for competition law enforcement. One involves significant overhaul of the Montenegrin Competition Act aimed at enhancing the powers of the competition agency, most notably by vesting it with the authority to impose fines (under the current system, the fines can be imposed only by misdemeanour courts). Additionally, the Antitrust Damages Act has been proposed, with the aim to enable private enforcement of competition law infringements.
Croatia enacted its new Emergency Price Control Measures Act on 24 February 2025, vesting the government with additional price control powers, such as the power to require retailers to regularly publish and update product prices on their websites, ensure unrestricted access to digital tools that allow real-time price comparisons for the benefit of consumers, and implement price change tracking by clearly displaying previous retail price of a product alongside the current retail price of the same product.
In North Macedonia, the Commission for the Protection of Competition has recently revealed that it is investigating four retail chains and one chamber of commerce on the suspicion of cartel on the retail market. Because in North Macedonia the competition authority does not reveal the identity of the parties while the proceedings are pending, information that the investigation is pending against the retailers VERO, Tinex, KAM, Reptil and the Union of Chambers of Commerce (UCC) has come from a news portal. According to the decisions on the launch of the investigations, published by the portal, the representatives of the UCC and four supermarket chains held a meeting on 5 February 2025 at which the supermarkets reached an agreement to boycott their suppliers who would increase prices, at least until the end of the first quarter of 2025. The authority’s preliminary evaluation is that this type of a horizontal cooperation is at the expense of unhindered competition on the retail market, presumably because it has an effect of foreclosing the market to suppliers and ultimately reducing the offering to the consumers. Regarding UCC, the Commission expressed its preliminary opinion that the chamber of commerce acted as a coordinator, influencing a perception among other retailers, as well as suppliers, that an agreement to boycott suppliers was reached between all undertakings on the retail market and not just four of them, thus influencing the behaviour of the retailers that were not present at the meeting.
