BULGARIA’S ANTI-MONOPOLY COMMISSION FOUND NO EVIDENCE OF FUEL CARTEL AGREEMENT

There is no cartel agreement on fuel prices, Bulgaria’s Commission for Protection of Competition (CPC) announced the conclusion on 29th of March. Although in October 2016 the antimonopoly commission said it had evidence that six oil companies operating in the retail fuel market had been involved in cartel agreement, almost half a year later the allegation was not confirmed.

In 2016, the Commission opened an investigation into a possible cartel agreement between the companies LUKOIL Bulgaria, Royal Dutch Shell, OMV, Eko, Gazprom (operating through NIS Petrol) and Bulgarian Petrol.

CPC requires the companies to only take measures for ensuring that contacts and exchanges of information between them are not exchanged, as well as to impose disciplinary penalties to the employees who do not comply with the requirement of confidentiality.

A series of spot checks were carried out during the investigation and multiple requests for provisions of information were made to clarify the factual situation.

Given the social importance of the sector of trade in fuels, the Commission carried out an analysis focused on the behaviour of the investigated companies and found market conditions mediating high level of transparency of pricing policy, as well as good knowledge of the behaviour of the competition.

The Commission considers that the independence of the behaviour of the enterprises is necessary to be guaranteed to a maximum degree, in view of the objective characteristics of the market. In this sense, the imposition of specific obligations is of fundamental importance for the facts identified at present and for the future behaviour of market participants in the sector, in relation to which the procedures were launched. the Commission says.