24/03/2000 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Monti's spokesperson confirmed that the Commission's inspectors had carried out inspections last week on the premises Italy's and the Netherlands' main beer manufacturers, in cooperation with the national authorities of the countries. These operations, that also covered the brewing associations of the two countries, comes within the context of a monitoring operation of the whole of the European beer market regarding the existence of possible agreements on prices, market shares and exchange of information between rival manufacturers. Similar inspections were made in previous years in Belgium and France.