The Italian Competition Authority to investigate bid-rigging practices in the emergency services sectors

The Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has taken quite a strict approach in competition enforcement in relation to public procurement contracts. This time, in the case I806, Servizi Elisoccorso-Anti.incendio boschivi  (http://www.agcm.it/component/joomdoc/allegati-news/I806_avv.%20istrutt.pdf/download.html), the ICA targets an alleged bid-rigging practice affecting very sensitive markets. In May 2016, an aggrieved competitor filed a complaint with the ICA by which he reported that many operators were since long coordinated their responses to the competitive tender procedures organized for the award of contracts for the provision of helicopters emergency medical (HEMS) services and fire-fighting (ABI) services. Therefore, in March 2017 the ICA decided to open an Article 101 TFEU investigation against seven providers of HEMS and ABI services and against a trade association, AEI, regrouping several helicopter operators.
The preliminary investigations conducted by the ICA focused on the bidding strategies followed by the parties in connection to 18 competitive tender procedures organized by 10 regional contracting authorities for the award of HEMS and ABI service contracts and by the National Emergency Service for the award of a nationwide ABI service contract over the 2009-2016 period. Several indicia of an anti-competitive agreements have been found in the conducts of the parties. In essence, the ICA noticed a certain parallelism in the conducts of the parties. The bids submitted by the parties did not overlap and the party that was awarded a contract was the only bidder for that. The party that made the winning bid did not offer substantive rebates. Moreover, the conducts of the parties concerned several competitive tender procedures that occurred over a long period of time and in different geographical areas.

The ICA believed that the parties coordinated their responses to the tender procedures might amount to a price-fixing and market sharing arrangements. It also feared that such coordination could also extend to other aviation transport services.

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