CARTELS : REMOVAL SERVICES: ECJ CONFIRMS FINES.

• Position: European Court of Justice - Brief article

Five companies have failed to get an annulment of the fines levied against them for having participated, between October 1984 and September 2003, in a cartel on the international removal services market. The EU Court of Justice (ECJ) rejected their appeals(1) against the General Court's 16 June 2011 ruling, thus confirming the fines levied against them for participating in a cartel.

Moreover, the judges confirmed the fine levied against the company Portielje, which the General Court had cancelled. The cartel related to the direct or indirect fixing of prices, market-sharing and the manipulation of the procedures for the submission of tenders, in particular by issuing false quotes to customers and through a compensation system for rejected offers. By a decision of 11 March 2008, the Commission imposed fines totalling 32.76 million on ten undertakings. Five companies appealed to the Court of Justice against those judgements of the General Court. The General Court, in its judgements, upheld, in essence, the...