CARTELS : COURT REDUCES OR ANNULS FINES IMPOSED ON REMOVAL FIRMS.

The EU General Court reduced and/or annulled the fines imposed by the European Commission on a number of companies accused of participating in a cartel on the market for international removal services in Belgium. In judgements handed down on 16 June(1), the court examined for the first time certain questions relating to interpretation of the new (2006) guidelines for calculating fines.

The cartel involved direct and indirect price fixing, market-sharing and manipulation of the procedure for the submission of tenders, in particular through the submission of false estimates to customers and a compensation system for rejected bids. Ten companies were fined a total of 32.76 million, in March 2008.

Five of the firms and some of their parent companies applied to the General Court for annulment of the decision or a reduction of their fine, namely: Team Relocations (3.49 million, of which 3 million to be paid jointly and severally with Trans Euro and Team Relocations Ltd, and 1.3 million to be paid jointly and severally with Amertranseuro, Trans Euro and Team Relocations Ltd), Putters International (395,000), Verhuizingen Coppens (104,000), Gosselin Group (3.28 million, of which 270,000 to be paid jointly and severally with Stichting Administratiekantoor Portielje, the foundation of its family shareholders) and Ziegler (9.2 million).

Although the court upheld the Commission's decision on the whole, it found that for Gosselin, the Commission had provided evidence of its participation in the infringement only for a duration of seven...