The thesis seeks to study through a qualitative text analysis how strategic policy concepts from three different policy documents concerning the use of the European Regional Development Fund can be said to align with two theoretical concepts from the field of regional development. Furthermore this paper aims to analyse how the theoretical- and policy-concepts are operationalized in the project that received funding in accordance with the policy concepts in one of the policy documents.

The main purpose of my thesis was to describe and analyse the system of the block exemptions. Briefly, the block exemption is a kind of exemption from the prohibition under article 101 (1) TFEU because it is supposed to fulfil the criteria of article 101 (3) TFEU. It exempts certain category of agreements, which are covered by the special regulation issued by the Council or more often by the Commission. The paper is divided into seven chapters and the first opening chapters are dealing with more general aspects of block exemption: the function, process of issuing, non- application and the advent of block exemption where the regulation 1/2003 (Modernisation Regulation) should be of special attention. It abolished the regime of previous notification of agreements to the Commission. An introduction to the system of other exemptions from the prohibition under article 101 (1) TFEU is also described there. The following part (chapter 4) focuses more detailed on the kinds of block exemptions, which are divided into the vertical, horizontal and sector exemptions. The former exemptions issued by the Czech Office for the Protection of Competition are no longer applicable and therefore only the block exemptions of the EU are of the concern of this paper. Furthermore, the special competition regime of some...