J. Sroczyński for WuW No. 9/2019 – Proceedings against DAF truck dealers suspected of involvement in a cartel

The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (“OCCP”) opened investigation against five dealers of DAF trucks and their nine managers. The OCCP alleges that the dealers participated in a market sharing cartel since 2011. They agreed not to sell trucks in each other’s regions and were coordinating tenders for trucks and exchanging pricing information. They were also offering trucks at higher prices to passive customers from other dealer’s regions, discouraging such customers from purchases outside the shared territories. One of the accused companies is a Dutch parent of the Polish dealer and its foreign managers. This is because the OCCP has found that they were ignoring alerts of the Polish subsidiary about the cartel. The OCCP has also dawn-raided Iveco Poland and its three dealers, searching for evidence of being engaged into similar practices as those in the case of DAF. Another market sharing investigation concerns Dell and its distributors. The OCCP performed dawn raids to secure evidence of customer allocation on the market for software servers.

The OCCP presented charges to Solgar Poland and its managers, for the alleged engagement in the vertical resale price maintenance practices on the diet supplements market. The OCCP has found that Solgar Poland was requiring from its resellers not to decrease retail prices and applied retaliatory measures in case of disobedience. The resellers were also monitoring each other’s prices and informed Solgar Poland if lower prices were applied.

The OCCP agreed to the takeover by BP Europe of rival Arge, both operators of petrol stations. The OCCP imposed on BP Europe a remedy to divest two petrol stations in the area of Cieszyn, in the vicinity of the Polish-Czech border. One of the stations belongs to BP Europe and the other to Arge. They are the last two petrol stations located on the Polish territory by the main cross-border motorway. For this reason, the OCCP raised competition concerns leading to the remedy. The OCCP defined the relevant geographic market as a local area within the radius of between 2.5 and 5 kilometres drive to a petrol station via public roads.

The OCCP has cleared an acquisition of Cinema 3D by Multikino, both operators of cinemas, imposing a remedy to divest one cinema in Gdansk. Multikino operates 32 cinemas in 27 locations and Cinema 3D 12 cinemas in 12 towns. An overlap in Gdansk was the source of the OCCP’s competition concerns. The OCCP defined the market as multi-screen cinemas, distinct from single-screen cinemas. The relevant geographic market of multi-screen cinemas was defined as the area of 30-minute drive by car to a cinema.

Several dealers of Merida, Trek and Cannondale bicycles were investigated by the OCCP under suspicion of vertical resale price maintenance. The OCCP also verified whether some of them applied a dual-pricing system in online sales and whether such sales were subject to market access restrictions.

J. Sroczyński, Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb. Developments in national competition law, No. 9/2019.