Romania’s Competition Council fines dental product distributors with over EUR 0.1 mln for anti-competitive agreements

The Romanian Competition Council applied total fines of RON 456,000 (or some EUR 106,000) to five companies for concluding an anti-competitive agreement on establishing the selling prices for dental products. Following the investigation started by the Competition Council in April 2011, Vita Zahnfabrik H. Rauter GmBH&Co.KG Germania was fined with RON 63,400 (EUR 14,260), while Dentotal Protect got the highest fine of RON 232,400 (EUR 52,200). The other three companies fined by the Competition Council were Helios Medical & Dental - RON 75,200 (almost EUR 17,000), Tehnodent Poka - RON 65,700 (EUR 14,700) and West Dental Teh-med - RON 19,400 (EUR 4,300). The Competition Council found that Vita Zahnfabrik Germania agreed with four distributors on the maximum discounts they were to apply when selling its products. “The competition law forbids any explicit or tacit agreements that lead to a distortion of the competition. Each company has to settle its pricing policy independently, not through an agreement with other companies. Basically, this agreement eliminated the competition between the dealers, which would have been in consumers’ benefit,” said Bogdan Chiritoiu, president of the Competition Council. In January this year, the Competition Council has fined 14 companies active in the electronics sector and members of ROREC and ECOTIC associations in Romania, with total fines of RON 56.4 million (some EUR 12.7 million) for concluding anticompetitive agreements under buy-back campaigns. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com