Martijn van de Hel was interviewed by PaRR in their weekly column Watchdog about raids in the automotive sector.
Both the European Commission as the UK Competition and Markets Authority have recently carried out dawn raids at carmakers. The Commission has raided Opel, Toyota and Renault and even the AECA (European Automobile Manufacturer’s Association) was not spared. Car manufacturers such as BMW, Volkswagen and Ford have already been questioned by these authorities.
Martijn van de Hel was asked for an explanation on why these sudden dawn raids were actually not that surprising and what conduct might have caught the attention of these competition authorities:
“Over the past twenty years when I have been practising, the auto sector has been the subject of probes roughly every two to three years.
What seems clear is that with the proliferation of auto probes this is unlikely to be brazen price-fixing.
Van de Hel said that the involvement of ACEA suggests brokerage by the industry association may lie at the heart of the conduct. Since cooperation with the purpose of recycling would not of itself constitute abusive conduct, it is likely that there is tie in the allegations between coordination carried out with a lawful purpose that might be suspected of having abusive effect.
According to van de Hel that is redolent of the sanction meted out in 2011 by DG Competition on Unilever and Procter & Gamble for fixing washing powder prices in eight EU countries. Germany's Henkel alerted the EC then to a cartel in laundry detergents.
In that case the price fixing began when the companies worked through a trade association to make their detergents more environmentally friendly. Having agreed on the reduction of environmentally harmful ingredients within the powders – the companies then crossed a line.’’
The full column can be read here.
