The federal government wants to strengthen the powers of the Federal Cartel Office in the fight against excessive prices. After long negotiations, specialist departments agreed on appropriate changes to the law, according to circles in the Federal Ministry of Economics. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported about it first. The federal cabinet is expected to agree this Wednesday.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) announced a year ago against the background of an explosion in fuel prices that he wanted to significantly expand the powers of the Cartel Office. Specifically, it is about an amendment to the law against restraints of competition.
The Federal Cartel Office should now get a new instrument of intervention, as it was called from the circles. The Cartel Office can initiate a so-called sector inquiry if “rigid prices” or other circumstances suggest that competition may be restricted. So far, however, sector inquiries have ended with a report from the Cartel Office.
Various intervention options
In the future, the authority should be able to order various measures in the event of disruptions to competition. In this way, market access is to be facilitated and concentration tendencies stopped, and in extreme cases companies can be unbundled. In the case of violations of antitrust law, it should also be made significantly easier to skim off the resulting benefits – i.e. corporate profits.
At the end of November, the Federal Cartel Office announced that an investigation into the refinery business in Germany had so far not revealed any signs of illegal price fixing by the mineral oil companies. The reason for this was an interim report on an investigation into a “sustainable decoupling” of petrol station prices from the development of the price of crude oil in the weeks and months after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. According to Andreas Mundt, President of the Authority, this development cannot be attributed to cost increases alone. However, one can only intervene if there is an initial suspicion of anti-competitive behavior.
The draft law states that even if companies behave in a market in compliance with antitrust law, the general conditions prevailing there could significantly disrupt competition. The consequences for consumers and companies are high prices, a smaller selection of products or low quality. So far there have been “gaps” in antitrust law with regard to such disruptions to competition. They could not be adequately addressed and remedied at present.
