Slovenian Competition Protection Agency (CPA) has concluded with the assessment of the cartel in the procedure initiated against four undertakings: Surovina, Dinos, Salomon Ljubljana and Recikel.
Within the procedure CPA found that all four undertakings agreed to eliminate from the market one of the competitors from the market for packaging waste management systems in the Republic of Slovenia and to share this market amongst them.
The undertakings Salomon, Surovina and Dinos operate on the market of waste packaging service providers (e.g. collection, separation, transport, recovery and disposal of packaging waste).
The undertakings Recikel, Surovina, Dinos and the affected competitor are operating in the market for the organization of packaging waste management systems in the Republic of Slovenia (hereinafter: the DROE market).
The markets are interconnected as undertakings from the DROE market order services from undertakings operating in the market of waste packaging service providers.
Evidence showed that the parties to the procedure agreed that the undertakings Salomon, Surovina and Dinos would cease to perform services of handling non-urban waste packaging in Slovenia for Interseroh, in order to drive this out of the market in the organization of waste packaging management systems, thereby seeking to remove the latter from the DROE market.
The affected competitor demands these services to a great extent from the undertakings Salomon, Surovina and Dinos.
The aim of the said cartel agreement was mainly to disable the affected competitor to provide the services of organizing packaging waste management systems due to a significant increase in its costs.
Consequently, its customers on the DROE market would therefore switch to other companies engaged in the same services, in particular to Recikel, Surovina and Dinos.
The parties to the procedure also agreed that Recikel, Surovina and Dinos would share the customers of the affected competitor in the DROE market amongst them and, to this end, exchanged the lists of customers of the affected competitor.
All of the above constitutes a prohibited agreement, which has as its object the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition in the territory of the Republic of Slovenia and in a significant part of the EU internal market, which could affect the trade between Member States.
Such conduct violates the first paragraph of Article 6 of the Slovenian Competition Act and the first paragraph of Article 101 of the TFEU.
During the procedure, the CPA received a leniency application from one of the parties to the procedure.
The applicant then cooperated with CPA in the procedure by disclosing the participation in the agreement under consideration and providing it with additional evidence proving the infringement in question.
The decision is not yet final since parties to the procedure have the right to judicial review before Administrative Court of the Republic of Slovenia.
The fines will be set in a separate minor offence procedure. ■