In 2024, the Competition Authority received four complaints (including anonymous notices) regarding possible unfair trading practices in the agricultural and food supply chain. The complaints primarily referred to commercial practices such as excessively long payment terms, charges not related to sales, or other problematic practices or contract terms.
In 2022, the Compulsory Liability Insurance of Health Care Providers Act (hereinafter the ‘Act’) was adopted, which obliges every health care provider operating under a licence to enter into a liability insurance contract no later than 30 calendar days from the entry into force of the Act. The Act entered into force on 1 November 2024. During the drafting of the Act, three insurance companies expressed their willingness to offer compulsory liability insurance for health care providers (hereinafter ‘patient insurance’).
In 2024, the Competition Authority focused on determining the competitive situation in the waste transport market. In recent years, the Authority has repeatedly dealt with complaints related to waste transport. For example, market participants have pointed to problems in the organisation of waste transport procurements, while waste holders are often concerned about the deteriorated quality of waste transport services and unreasonably high prices for additional services.
In 2024, the Competition Division conducted 17 supervisory proceedings, and the Regulatory Division conducted 7.
The emphasis was on focal topics such as energy and waste transport, but the implementation of patient insurance also needed to be supervised.
When assessing the effectiveness of price regulation, the metrics used are the dynamics of regulated prices in real terms, as well as the capital productivity of enterprises, the efficiency of energy use in heat production and in electricity and district heating networks, and the quality of the service sold to consumers (the indicator is the quality of energy supply, which is measured in the security of supply indicators of electricity network services: SAIFI, SAIDI, CAIDI).
In the postal sector, AS Eesti Post and NOVA POST Estonia OÜ provided services requiring an activity licence in 2024. Both are authorised to deliver items of correspondence and parcels as regular, registered, insured or batch items, both as a domestic and international service.
In 2024, AS Eesti Post, operating under the Omniva brand, continued to be the only provider of periodicals home delivery in Estonia.
In 2024, electricity and gas prices were highly volatile. Such volatility can be attributed to various factors, in particular difficult weather conditions, short- and long-term maintenance and repair work at production plants, as well as transmission capacity limitations both in Estonia and in neighbouring countries. In 2024, Estonia imported more electricity than it exported. Table 1 shows the import, export, domestic production and consumption of electricity in Estonia.
In 2024, the average exchange prices in the electricity and natural gas market decreased. The annual average exchange price of electricity in the Estonian price area was 87.27 €/MWh (90.78 €/MWh in 2023). The average natural gas exchange price in the Estonian price area in 2024 was 37.09 €/MWh (45.72 €/MWh in 2023).
A total of 854 administrative procedures/measures:
A total of 45 merger notifications were submitted in 2024.
In total, the Competition Authority conducted proceedings in 52 cases, including 7 cases that came over from the previous year.
Additionally, 5 cases were carried over to 2025.
A total of 47 merger approval decisions were made.
4 mergers underwent further proceedings (i.e. 1+4 months).