competitionlaw

The regional administrative court of Puglia (TAR Puglia) has uphold a decision of the Bari Port Authority (BPA) by which the latter had quashed its previous decision to award to a fully owned subsidiary, Bari Porto Mediterraneo (BPM) the concession for the management of the maritime terminal at the port of Bari and the provision of services to passengers (TAR Puglia, chamber of Bari, case 440/2009, Bari Porto Mediterraneo/Autorità Portuale di Bari), The TAR Puglia rules that the decision to grant the concession for the provision of the above services directly, without any competitive procedure, to a company fully owned by the awarding public authority (PBA) violates the Act 84/1994, which lays down the general legal regimes for ports. More precisely, the management of maritime terminal and the provision of services to passengers entrusted to PBA through the concession at issue, can be regarded as services of general economic interest which fall within the scope of application of the a...

By the decision taken in the Costa Container Lines / Sintermar-Terminal darsena Toscana (AGCM, decision n. 19462, 29 January 2009, case I685, Boll. 4/09) the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) found that two companies providing container handling services in the port of Livorno (Leghorn), Terminal Darsena Toscana (TDT) and Servizi Integrati Terrestri Marittimi (Sintermar) engaged in price-fixing arrangements. The relevant product market comprehends container handling services as a whole for the ICA did deem it necessary to further divide that into the segment for transfer of containers to/from ship to/from land carriers and into the transhipment segment. The geographical relevant market is constituted only by the port of Livorno where the parties are the leading operators totaling an about 80% combined market shares. The ICA found a low degree of substitutability of the port of Livorno with other ports, the only exception being that with the neighbor port of La Spezia. The inclusion...

The Italian higher administrative court (Consiglio di Stato, or CdS, case 824/09, Mantini c Comunità Montana Vestina Zona I di Penne, http://www.giustizia-amministrativa.it/ricerca2/Risult.asp?nIdx=0 ) has confirmed the strict regime applying to the award of a public contracts to mixed companies. In the case, a group of local entities had incorporated a company, Ambiente, which should provide them with a number of environmental services. Ambiente, which is fully owned by the above local entities , in turn, set up a second company, Ecologica, with a view to using it as a vehicle for supplying the services in question. Indeed, Ambiente lacked the necessary assets and authorizations for carrying out itself the tasks conferred by its members Later, another local entity, Comunità Vestina, bought a stake in Ambiente. Comunità Vestina and Ambiente also entered into a contract by means of which the former assigned to Ambiente waste disposal services. The parties agreed to outsource the ...