Brussels, 18/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Depending on certain obligations, the European Commission has approved a set of contracts concluded by the German firm Duales System Deutschland AG (DSD) in the context of its system of selective collection and recovery of sales packaging waste. On 20 April of this year, the Commission had already taken a stance on another aspect of this same case. The decision then only concerned the clause of the contract on the use of DSD's "Green point" logo, without questioning the existence or the overall functioning of the DSD system (see EUROPE of 21 April, p.10). In the decision it has just adopted, the Commission defines the conditions necessary for there to be actual competition in the field of the collection and recovery of packaging waste in Germany. Firstly, it points out that it can only agree to long-term exclusivity provisions in favour of collection companies if the indispensable nature of these provisions can be justified by convincing economic arguments. Then, it stresses the importance it attaches to free and unimpeded access to the collection infrastructures for DSD competitors.
DSD in currently the only company in Germany that runs a countrywide system for the collection and recycling of sales packaging. It does not itself collect this waste but calls on local collection companies with which it has concluded services agreements, agreements that, end-1998 and 1999, led to complaints on the part of rival companies, claiming that these contracts impeded free competition. Indeed, according to these contracts, the collection company has as exclusive task the collection and selection of sales packaging in a given collection area, the exclusivity provision having as consequence, given DSD's position on the market and the duration of the services contracts, to considerably impede access to the market in question for rival national or foreign companies. Initially, most contracts were to expire end-2007 and the Commission decided, after examination, that were these contracts to remain in force until end-2003, the companies had sufficient time to make a satisfactory return on their investment. After that deadline, the contracts will have to be the subject of calls for tender in compliance with the German decree on packaging. In addition, the Commission opposed DSD's practice by which the latter itself chose those guarantors allowed to market materials gathered by the collection companies, which are not allowed to do this on their own initiative. The European Executive considered that this practice was restrictive from a competition point of view, in the sense that the collection companies were limited in their relations with third parties. DSD thus undertook before the Commission to retroactively put an end to this system from 1 January 1996. As for the statutes of the guarantor contracts, the Commission did not oppose them given that they did not contain any provision of exclusivity.
As a reminder, the Commission had already taken a stance in the elimination of packaging waste sector with the examination of contracts concluded by the French company Eco-Emballages (EUROPE of 18&19 June, p.16). The principles set in these decisions will be applied to other systems currently notified, i.e., the ARA system in Austria and the Fost Plus system in Belgium, the Commission stipulates.