Prices
Cartel Office will impose fewer fines for collusion in 2021
A sign points to the entrance to the Federal Cartel Office. Photo: Henning Kaiser / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Price fixing between companies harms consumers. This year, the Cartel Office was much less active due to such market manipulation – but this is also due to the pandemic.
The Federal Cartel Office imposed fines totaling around 105 million euros this year for illegal agreements. Eleven companies and eight people were affected, as the Bonn authority announced on Wednesday in its annual balance sheet.
Among other things, it was about price fixing for musical instruments, school bags and entertainment electronics. However, sectors such as stainless steel production and steel forging were also affected.
The amount of the fines imposed was significantly lower than in previous years. In 2020 the total was 358 million and in 2019 even 848 million euros.
The President of the Cartel Office, Andreas Mundt, emphasized: “The pandemic has slowed our cartel prosecution a little over the past two years. It is not easy to advance proceedings under such conditions that rely on searches of business and private premises or the examination of witnesses in order to preserve evidence. ” In 2021, the authority carried out two searches – under strict hygiene regulations.
Mundt also said that the Cartel Office was ready to initiate further proceedings in the new year. “New evidence also shows us that cartels – unfortunately – are not going to die out.”
However, competition protection in the digital economy will also have priority for the Cartel Office in 2022. Mundt announced that the competition watchdogs want to quickly present the first results of the recently initiated proceedings against Amazon, Apple, Google and the Facebook parent company Meta in the new year. The background: Since the beginning of the year, the authority has been able to act faster and more effectively against alleged anti-competitive practices by large digital corporations. They immediately initiated proceedings.