Brussels, 30/06/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 30 June, the European Commission announced plans to simplify its procedures against those suspected of involvement in illegal agreements. In certain cases, this will involve giving the companies in question the opportunity to have their fines reduced by 10% in exchange for agreeing not to challenge the accusations of the Commission, which hopes that this will help to eliminate several procedural stages of a number of its dossiers, thus improving the general efficiency of its fight against cartels within the European Economic Area.
The Commission will carry out a careful analysis of the dossiers, in order to decide whether or not the evidence against a company suspected of taking part in a cartel is sufficient to convince the latter to agree to a settlement. If the Commission takes the view that the evidence is sufficiently compelling, it will offer the option of a settlement. The company will then have 15 days to decide whether or not it wishes to take the institution up on its offer. If it does, it will then have the opportunity to examine the dossier compiled by the Commission. It is only then that it must decide whether or not to go down the settlement route, once it has been able to assess the weight of the evidence against it.
It is worth noting that even if the companies opt to settle, they will be able to bring an appeal before the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. "Legally, we can't take away the right to appeal. But the likelihood of an appeal will be much, much reduced". Appeals to the Court in this field relate mainly to issues of procedure or of law, and are therefore unlikely to have any bearing on any previous acknowledgment of culpability on the part of the company in question. On average, they lead to a reduction of fines in the region of 10-15%, with a variation on the basis of the specific nature of the case in hand. Nor does the settlement rule out private actions brought by third parties against cartel member companies, similar to the one brought by the Commission against its suppliers of lifts and escalators last week. But the main advantage for the company in question consists of the reduction of fines - the 10% applies to the final sum total of the fines - and also the opportunity to "draw a line under" the procedure, which is very damaging to the company's reputation. The Commission, meanwhile, has the advantage of being able to eliminate the stages of the companies' pleas and their access to the full dossier, which are the most time-consuming parts of the procedure. This will free up resources to deal with other dossiers, states a source close to the dossier, which will have a secondary dissuasive effect: a more flexible Commission, which is capable of opening more investigations and more to be feared by companies taking part in cartels, the expert continues. The level of 10% was decided upon in order to be attractive to the companies, but not excessive. Firstly, the Commission does not want companies to be able to claim that it "twisted their arm" to drag a confession out of them, an argument which could have been used if the level of reward was too high. Secondly, the Commission does not want to bring in competition for the existing clemency procedures (which make it very much worthwhile for companies to come forward themselves with new information which is of use in the investigation). Companies will have to declare their potential interest in involvement in clemency and settlement procedures at the same time. The procedure will enter into force when it is published, imminently, in the Official Journal of the EU. It will then be used for any cases for which the statement of objections was sent out after its entry into force. More information is available at http: //ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/cartels/legislation/settlements.html (C.D./transl.fl)