The Plenary Session of the Competition Commission (EA) with no. 759/2021 its unanimous decision, during the simplified Dispute Settlement procedure of article 25a of law 3959/2011 and in accordance with no. 720/2020 its decision, accepted the relevant Dispute Settlement proposals submitted by the companies i) CORFU SHIPS JOINT VENTURE with the distinctive title “Kerkyra Lines” and ii) IGOUMENITSA – CORFU – PAXAS SHIPS JOINT VENTURE with the distinctive title “Kerkyra Seaways”.
The Decision was issued during the above simplified procedure, following a relevant expression of interest on the part of the companies for their inclusion in the procedure and a consequent final declaration of acceptance of the infringement found.
EA imposed reduced fines due to the dispute settlement procedure for the execution of the established, based on the reasoning of the Decision, violation of article 1 of law 3959/2011, ie amounting to 189,972.0 euros for the CORFU SHIP JOINT JOINT, amounting to Euros for the IGOUMENITSA – CORFU – PAXA SHIP JOINT VENTURE (Total fines: 324,864.0 euros).
Dispute Settlement Procedure
The dispute settlement procedure concerns the cases where companies or associations of companies voluntarily and unreservedly admit their participation in a horizontal cartel, in violation of article 1 of Law 3959/2011 and / or article 101 TFEU, and facilitate, with the in this way, the procedure for establishing the infringement by the Competition Commission. In these cases a reduction of the fine by 15% is granted under certain conditions.
The purpose of the dispute settlement procedure is the simplification and acceleration of the administrative procedure for issuing decisions by the Competition Commission for violations of article 1 of Law 3959/2011 and / or article 101 TFEU, as well as the limitation of the number of appeals filed against decisions of the Commission before the Administrative Court of Appeal of Athens.
This enables the Commission to deal with more cases with its own resources and with less administrative burden, thus increasing the deterrent nature of its action and, at the same time, raising citizens’ interest in effective and timely punishment. of offenders.
Record
Following information received from the Directorate General of Competition (GDA) and the preliminary investigation carried out, it was decided to launch an ex-officio investigation to examine the conditions of competition in the ferry connection of the port of Igoumenitsa with the island of Corfu. On 09.07.2020, the General Directorate of Competition carried out an on-site inspection at the headquarters of the above companies. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the documents collected by the audit, deposits were received illegally from the legal representatives of the aforementioned consortia and letters of inquiry-questionnaires were sent.
Based on the investigation of the Service, there were direct or indirect contacts between the two competing companies regarding their future behavior for the ferry connection Igoumenitsa – Corfu – Igoumenitsa regarding the ticket prices and the itinerary declarations of the consortia.
In this regard, the Kerkyra Lines and Kerkyra Seaways consortia have launched a joint project to set ticket prices and share purchases (by defining the number of routes between them) and formulate a commonly accepted timetable for the future, in the ferry market Igoumenitsa – Igoumenitsa.
The aim of the cartel was to set prices at different levels from those that would have been set under conditions of real competition and to distribute customers among themselves.
The violation has as start date 24.01.2019 and as end date 09.07.2020, date on which the on-site inspection of the GDA took place at the headquarters of the consortia.
The two audited consortia, for which evidence was collected capable of proving a violation of Article 1 of Law 3959/2011, expressed their interest in writing to investigate their possibility of being included in the dispute settlement process and submitted a relevant request, in accordance with the provisions of par. 30 of the Communication on the dispute settlement procedure.
Related Market
The relevant product market at present is the provision of ferry services referred to in ferry service. The relevant geographic market is the ferry connection Igoumenitsa-Corfu.
Legal assessment
This is an agreement between the involved consortia, which seeks to limit competition between them through a horizontal agreement on pricing and market sharing (itineraries). Horizontal cartels involving pricing and market sharing constitute serious restrictions on competition. With regard to the actual (or potential) impact on the market, it is considered that the objective restriction of competition (pricing and market sharing) observed has an impact on the market by its nature, which, however, concerns a market with limited geographical area – the ferry connection Igoumenitsa – Corfu – Igoumenitsa.
It is noted that this is the fourth case where all the companies involved come for settlement and at a stage without having previously been served with a relevant Proposal, which increases the procedural efficiency of EA, while the case was completed in just 1.5 years from the start of the investigation (the average completion of cartel cases without a settlement procedure in the European Commission is about 50 months).
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Source From: Capital
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