October 29, 2025

 

On October 29, 2025, during the public part of the plenary session in the form of written proceedings, the First Senate deliberated the case upon the constitutional complaint of Euro Smart Power LLC (hereinafter, the “Company”).

During the plenary session, Judge-Rapporteur Oleksandr Petryshyn presented the content of the constitutional complaint and the applicant's arguments. He informed that the Company had appealed to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to verify the compliance of the first sentence of the first paragraph, the third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs of Article 56.5 of the Law of Ukraine “On Protection of Economic Competition” dated January 11, 2001 No. 2210-III, as amended (hereinafter, the “Law”).with the Constitution of Ukraine

According to  Article 56.5 of the Law, “for each day of delay in payment of the fine, a penalty of one and a half percent of the amount of the fine shall be charged” (first sentence of the first paragraph); “the accrual of penalties shall be suspended for the duration of the consideration or review by the commercial court of: a case on the invalidation of a decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine to impose a fine; the relevant decision (ruling) of the commercial court” (paragraphs three, four, and five).

In the Company's opinion, the provisions of Article 56.5 of the Law “contradict the principle of the rule of law in terms of the ideology of justice of law, the principle of individualization of legal liability” and “violate the right to judicial protection, as well as the right to property, as they establish disproportionate interference with property rights.”

Based on the analysis of the constitutional complaint and the materials attached to it, the following conclusions can be drawn.

The Company, disagreeing with the decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) to impose a fine of UAH 3,269,684 on it for violating antimonopoly legislation, filed a lawsuit with the courts of the judicial system. The courts of first and appellate instances refused to satisfy the claims. Immediately after the final decision was rendered, the Company paid the fine in full, and in accordance with the decision of the court of cassation in the case, in which the AMCU was the plaintiff, the Company paid the accrued penalty in the same amount as the fine.

In its constitutional complaint, the Company notes that, according to the Supreme Court's explanations on the application of the provisions of Article 56.5 of the Law, the collection of penalties for late payment of fines is suspended only for the period during which the specified consideration or review was actually carried out (in the court of first instance – from the date of initiation of proceedings in the case to the date of the decision in the case; in the courts of appeal and cassation – from the date of acceptance of the appeal or cassation complaint to the date of the decision), and this period does not include the time when the case materials were in court and no consideration or review of the case was carried out.

In view of the above explanations of the court, the Company expresses the opinion that the contested provisions of the Law do not comply with the principle of the rule of law and the ideology of justice.

The Court examined the materials of the case and proceeded to the in-camera part of the plenary session.

Representatives of the legal entity entitled to file a constitutional complaint, attorneys Andriy Savchuk and Andriy Tomchyshyn, participated in the plenary session.

The video recording of the plenary session is available on the Court’s official website in the Section “Archive of Video Broadcasts of Sessions”.