Legal issue: the legality of the Federal  Antimonopoly Service guidelines, on which  basis the unannounced antitrust inspections (or “dawn raids”) are conducted.

Ratio decidendi: the Court held the guidelines in question to be invalid in full from the moment of their adoption. In so doing, the Court reiterated its doctrine, according to which it is the contents, not the form, of the contested act that matters for the purposes of judicial review, and made the following findings: 1) the guidelines in question, even though they are called “recommendations”, do qualify as a normative act and were therefore subject to registration by the Ministry of Justice; and 2) the guidelines do not merely provide  clarifications of the Competition Law but, in fact, complement it with regard to the regulation of “dawn raids”; however, the power to complement the Law on this particular issue has not been legislatively granted to the Federal Antimonopoly Service; thus, the latter was acting ultra vires.

Practical consequences: the rights of companies infringed by the application of the invalidated normative act may by restored in due course; the Federal Antimonopoly Service is precluded from reproducing the contents of these “recommendations” in a new normative act that would have been properly issued and registered in the Ministry of Justice.