European Commission re-adopts decision against manufacturer in envelope cartel case

• 19/06/2017
• Articles

On 16 June 2017, the European Commission re-imposed a fine of €4.7 million on envelope manufacturer Printeos (formerly known as Tompla) for its involvement in a price-fixing and market-allocation cartel relating to the sale of envelopes between 2003 and 2008.

In December 2014, the Commission adopted a decision against Printeos and several other undertakings under its cartel settlement procedure in relation to their participation in the cartel. On appeal, the General Court (“GC”) annulled the Commission’s settlement decision in so far as it concerned Printeos due to a lack of sufficient reasoning concerning the grant of discretionary fine reductions to the addressees of the decision (see VBB on Competition Law, Volume 2016, No. 12). In its decision, the Commission had adjusted the fines so they would not exceed the maximum of 10% of the undertakings’ total turnover. As a result of these adjustments, the fines ranged between 4.5% of the total turnover of one settling undertaking to 9.7% in the case of Printeos. The Commission did not explain in its decision why it had applied different individual reduction rates to the undertakings concerned. As Printeos was not in a position to understand or dispute the fining methodology followed by the Commission in its settlement decision and the GC was not fully able to exercise its powers of judicial review with regards to the Commission’s compliance with that principle, the GC annulled the decision in so far as it concerned Printeos.

Following the GC’s judgment, the Commission has re-adopted a more fully reasoned decision against Printeos to address the error identified by the GC in its judgment and re-imposed a fine on Printeos, the amount of which is identical to that imposed in the original decision.