Brussels, 12/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 11 April, the European Commission welcomed the commitments put forward by five e-book publishers, including Apple, in a transatlantic investigation into potential price-fixing to restrict competition in the European e-book market.
EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that in its investigation into the sale of digital books, the European Commission had received offers from Apple and international publishers Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck. He welcomed the successful cooperation with the US antitrust authorities and the fact that the five publishers had offered commitments to enable the investigation to be closed in Europe rapidly. The sixth publisher under investigation, Pearson, had not made any commitments.
The investigation opened in December 2011 into a suspected e-book price-fixing deal among six leading publishers around the world, Apple, Simon & Schuster (a subsidiary of CBS), HarperCollins (a subsidiary of News Corp.), Hachette (a subsidiary of Lagardère S.C.A.), Penguin Group (a subsidiary of Pearson) and Macmillan (a subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrink). The European Commission looked at e-book aspects of contracts between the publishers and retailers which might influence the retail price.
The six publishers in question are also being investigated in the United States by the justice ministry for a suspected price-fixing agreement to push up the price of e-books and limit competition. Agreement has been reached with three of them, Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon&Schuster, which have agreed to change their pricing policy, unlike the other three. (FG/transl.fl)