On Thursday 21 September, the European Commission announced that it had imposed a fine of €1.2 million on the defence subsidiary of the Diehl group for taking part in a cartel concerning the sale of military hand grenades with its competitor RüstungsUnternehmen-AktienGesellschaft (RUAG) throughout the European Economic Area between 7 November 2007 and 23 November 2021. According to the Commission, this is the first cartel case in the defence sector.
The European Commission launched unannounced inspections on 23 November 2021 following a request for immunity from RUAG. The Commission notes that RUAG’s involvement in the infringement ended on 15 April 2021.
Both companies admitted their participation in the cartel, which is prohibited by Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and Article 53 of the Agreement on the European Economic Area.
RUAG and Diehl agreed to a settlement. As a result, RUAG was exempted from a fine of approximately €2.5 million under the Commission’s leniency programme, adopted in 2006, because RUAG disclosed the cartel to the Commission. Diehl also received a 50% reduction of the fine for its cooperation in the investigation.
In order to set the amount of the fine at a sufficiently deterrent level, the Commission emphasised that it had made use of the discretion conferred on it by point 37 of the “2006 Guidelines on the method of setting fines in antitrust cases” by significantly increasing the amount of the fine. The institution points out that if it had stuck to the general methodology of the guidelines, the amount of the fine would have been too low.
In addition, under the 2008 Commission notice on settlement procedures in cartel cases, the Commission applied a 10% reduction to fines imposed on the companies for acknowledging their involvement in the infringement. (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)