Romanian competition authority triples fines in 2013

Romania's Competition Council applied EUR 20 million in fines last year, almost triple the amount in 2012, but 15 times lower than the fines in 2011, according to its activity report. The Council fined 35 companies for anti-competitive practices in 2013. The year 2011 brought a peak in fines as it was the end of several cases which involved companies with high turnovers – the telecom anti-competitive fines for Orange and Vodafone. Among the highest fines given last year were the EUR 12.7 million for the 14 companies in the ROREC and ECOTIC associations, on their anti-competitive buy-back campaigns for IT&C products. EUR 3.8 million in fines were also applied to the National Company Romanian Lottery, and to Intralot SA Integrated Lottery Systems and Services, Intracom Holdings for anti-competitive agreements. The Council applied most of the fines – 80 percent – for horizontal anti-competitive agreements, meaning between companies operating at the same level of production or distribution in the market. The rest were vertical agreements, meaning between companies at different levels in the supply chain. The Competition Council started 18 new investigations last year, including 12 for potential competition breech, and 6 sectoral investigations. The Council finalized 23 investigations in 2013, one less than in 2012. Only four of these were sectoral investigations. The full report from the Competition Council is here (in English, 133 pages, in pdf document). editor@romania-insider.com