Brussels, 05/04/2006 (Agence Europe) - The agreement between the Polish government and UniCredit does not signify an end to the proceedings brought by the European Commission against the Polish authorities for their attitude in the operation between the Italian bank and its German counterpart HypoVereinsbank (HVB), a spokesperson for Neelie Kroes told the press on Wednesday. Her colleague responsible for the internal market, Charlie McCreevy, also confirmed that it is “only on the basis of the response from the Polish authorities that we can see what is going on and take a decision in full knowledge of the facts”. On Wednesday UniCredit confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the Polish authorities to put an end to their dispute and permit it to acquire HVB. According to this agreement, UniCredit will split from around 200 branches of BPH, which has around 480 in total, the Italian bank indicates in a press release.
The competition and internal market services of the European Commission issued a double warning to Warsaw at the beginning of March (EUROPE 9147) for its blocking of the merger project, which has ramifications for the Polish branches of the two banks (HVB owns BPH and UniCredit owns Pekao). Under competition rules, the Commission has exclusive competence to assess European-scale merger projects. In this case the green light was given in October 2005, but the Polish authorities invoked a non-competition clause agreed by UniCredit when it bought Pekao, which prevents it from taking control of any other Polish bank. The European Commission's competition services decided that this measure would de facto prevent the merger of UniCredit and HVB, and that Poland had therefore encroached on the Commission's exclusive competence in this area (article 21 of the Treaty). It is on the basis of the response to these accusations that the Commission will assess the follow-up from the point of view of the competition rules. Commissioner McCreevy has also sent a letter of formal notice to Warsaw, deeming that these national measures were such as constituted an infringement of the Community rules on freedom of establishment (article 43) and the free movement of capital (article 56). Poland still has until the beginning of May to make any clarifications on this case.