Belgian Competition Authority: enforcement priorities for 2017
While taking stock for 2016 with the publication of its annual report, the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) looked into the future, setting out its priorities for 2017.
The focus will be on the following sectors:
- liberalised sectors and network industries, in particular telecom
- distribution and supply relationships, in particular resale price maintenance and restrictions of online sales
- services sector, in particular activities in the framework of trade associations
- bid rigging
- the pharmaceutical sector, in particular the prices of pharmaceutical labs, the competition between wholesale distributors and innovation at the level of the pharmacies, and
- logistics.
Recent enforcement activities learn that companies should brace themselves as the BCA appears ready to put its money where its mouth is.
Confirming its focus on the distribution sector, the BCA fined in March 2017 yeast supplier Algist Bruggeman €5.5m for anti-competitive vertical restraints. Algist Bruggeman was found guilty of having engaged in resale price maintenance, exclusive customer allocation, long-term non-compete obligations and abusive exclusionary practices (for more details, see “Belgian competition authority joins battle against anti-competitive vertical restraints”). Moreover, the BCA conducted on 05 May 2017 dawn raids at a distributor of water softeners and a distributor of cooking utensils and wine accessories on the suspicion of anti-competitive agreements.
Further, the BCA turned its sights on bid rigging, ie anti-competitive agreements in the framework of public tenders. Earlier this year, it published a manual for purchasing agents at contracting authorities. The manual provides tips on how to identify suspicious conduct as well as on possible precautionary measures.
Showing it is not a paper tiger, the BCA fined in May 2017 Sécheron, Siemens, ABB, AEG and Schneider €1.779m for bid rigging. The bid rigging related to calls for tender launched by Infrabel. The companies were found to have submitted price offers calculated in such a way that the request for quotation was won by the company they had previously designated. Interesting to note is that the BCA took into account as a mitigating factor the fact that some of Infrabel employees inappropriately disclosed to the companies information that facilitated the establishment and the functioning of the cartel.
