The Italian Competition Authority finds a cartel in the maritime links in the Gulfs of Naples and Salerno

By a recent decision made in the Case I689C the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) found that several ferry operators providing transport passenger services across the Gulf of Naples and the Gulf of Salerno, plus some joint ventures set up by them and a trade association infringed Article 101 TFEU in two ways.
First, the parties did not comply with the commitments they gave to the ICA to close a previous Article 101 investigation concerning a market share agreement for some maritime links in the Gulf of Naples. Following several complaints filed by passengers, the ICA reopened the investigation it had closed with a commitment decision in October 2009. Then it found that the parties were replicating the same anti-competitive conducts, in the shape of coordination of their commercial policies and operative strategies, the ICA had detected in the previous investigation opened in 2008.
Second, the ICA found that the parties breached Article 101 TFEU with a further anti-competitive horizontal agreement. Through this agreement the parties allocated the revenues and costs generated by the maritime links they operated across the Gulfs of Naples and Salerno on the basis of previously agreed criteria and quotas. The agreement was implemented with a systematic exchange of sensitive commercial data.

Totally, the fines the ICA levied on all the parties exceeded € 14 million.

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