Because the Tar has rejected the Antitrust fine to Poste Italiane
The Lazio Regional Administrative Court canceled the maximum fine of over 11 million euros imposed in July 2021 by the Agcm on Poste Italiane for "abuse of economic dependence". Here are all the details
The Lazio Regional Administrative Court rejects the Antitrust fine for Poste Italiane.
In July 2021 the Competition and Market Authority, after starting the investigation, concluded that Poste Italiane imposed unjustifiably burdensome clauses in the contracts signed in 2012 and 2013, and in force until June 2017, with Soluzioni Srl , a company which for many years carried out the mail distribution and collection service in the city of Naples on behalf of Poste Italiane.
Therefore the authority had sanctioned the group led by Matteo Del Fante with a fine of 11.2 million euros.
For the first section of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, on the other hand, as stated in the sentence, the Antitrust provision "imposed a sanction for unproven abuse, since the preliminary evidence was assessed in an illogical and contradictory manner" and therefore decided the annulment of the deed imposing the 11.2 million euro fine.
All the details.
THE ACCUSATION OF SOLUTIONS SRL
Poste Italiane, which provides the universal postal service, usually enters into various contracts with third parties to partially outsource mail delivery and collection services. Solutions, which operated in the Naples area on behalf of Poste Italiane, was one of these companies until 2017.
According to the reporting company, the agreements with Poste Italiane would have caused damage to competition. In particular, Soluzioni pointed the finger at some clauses that would have prevented the search for third party clients or to operate in direct competition with the incumbent.
THE ANTITRUST SANCTION
For the Antitrust "the company has adopted a set of unjustifiably burdensome contractual conditions and has engaged in abusive conduct which has produced a substantial imbalance in the negotiating relationship with Soluzioni, forced, among other things, to bear the ban on the joint transport and delivery of products of Poste Italiane and those of third parties, as well as to allow Poste to reduce, at will, the minimum quantities and to change the type of products". The authority therefore fined Poste Italiane for over 11 million euros for abuse of economic dependence.
THE TAR EXCUSES ITALIAN POSTAL
However, the Regional Administrative Court considered the actions of Poste, represented by the Brancadoro Mirabile law firm with Carlo Mirabile and by the Grimaldi law firm with Francesco Sciaudone, Bernardo Giorgio Mattarella and Andrea Neri, to be legitimate.
The decision is contained in a sentence with which the administrative judges have fully accepted an appeal brought by the same company, the main operator in the postal sector on the national territory.
THE MOTIVATIONS OF THE ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGES
Preliminarily, the Tar noted that "the factual elements collected by the Authority during the investigation can be considered essentially uncontested, except for some secondary circumstances on which it does not appear appropriate to dwell: conversely, the conclusions reached by the Agcm appear to be result of a contradictory and illogical argumentative process”.
In essence, according to the judges "the elements collected during the preliminary investigation do not appear sufficient to support the hypothesis of economic dependence of the Solutions on the Italian Post Office".
Specifically, "the exposure regarding the duration of the contractual relationships between the companies appears contradictory" and "the circumstance that the contracts were stipulated following a public tender should have been subject to careful evaluation by the Agcm", similarly, then, "the conclusions according to which the substantial mono-contracting would, in itself, determine economic dependence appear unconvincing". In any case "even if we want to consider the aforesaid dependency as existing, the conclusions regarding the abuse carried out to the detriment of the counter-interested company are totally illogical".
Therefore, the conclusion according to the TAR is that "it appears evident that the enforced provision has imposed a sanction for an unproven abuse, since the preliminary evidence has been evaluated in an illogical and contradictory manner".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-il-tar-ha-bocciato-la-multa-antitrust-a-poste-italiane/ on Wed, 14 Jun 2023 15:50:21 +0000.