The Effectiveness of the Leniency Program in Combating Cartel Agreements in Poland

Abstract

The Leniency program that has been analyzed raises the question concerning its effectiveness in fighting with the cartel agreements and whether it encourages the participants of the cartel enough to betray other participants of the cartel agreement. Examining such effectiveness is hard enough because of the secret character of functioning of cartels themselves and, in fact, it is not known how many cartel agreements exist in the Polish economy. The aim of the article is to analyze the effectiveness of methods of combating anticompetitive agreements such as cartels through mechanisms of the Leniency program. The intention of the Author is to make an attempt at researching the construction of the Leniency program itself and then, basing on the analysis of documents and reports of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection, researching the rate of cartel agreements from 2005 to 2012.