European Commission Carries Out Dawn Raid at Belgian Premises of Animal Health Firm
- 25/10/2021
- Articles
The European Commission (the Commission) announced this morning that it is carrying out unannounced inspections at the Belgian premises of a firm active in the animal health sector (see, attachment). The firm is suspected of having engaged in conduct in breach of Article 102, Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits the abuse of a dominant position on the relevant market. However, the Commission did not offer any details regarding the practices under review.
The inspections follow on the heels of a speech on the subject of cartel enforcement which Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, responsible for competition policy, delivered last Friday in Rome. In that talk, the Commissioner not only referred to the high-profile inspections which the Commission had already carried out earlier in October 2021 in the wood pulp sector. She made it also clear that more would follow:
“And that’s just the start of a series of raids that we’re planning for the months to come – you’ll understand if I don’t say exactly when or where they’re going to happen”.
The Commissioner thus issued a strong warning to the business community that the Commission had emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic and that the Commission’s “work on collecting evidence [would be] gathering pace”.
Commissioner Vestager also explained that, given the decrease in the number of leniency applications, the Commission is investing in alternative ways of detecting cartels. In leniency applications, members of a cartel take the initiative to contact a competition authority, confess their participation in the cartel and help the competition law enforcers to dismantle and sanction the cartel.
The alternative detecting methods contemplated by Commissioner Vestager include (i) the development of an electronic tool for use by whistle blowers; (ii) the increased reliance on intelligence analysts and data scientists; (iii) informal discussions with industry members (“people on the ground”); and (iv) the sharing of ex officio leads with fellow competition authorities and other law enforcement agencies.