BONN (dpa-AFX) – The Federal Cartel Office has warned Deutsche Bahn about a possible obstruction of mobility platforms. One had come to the preliminary conclusion that certain behavior and contractual clauses of the railways towards mobility platforms represented an abuse of market power, the authority announced on Wednesday in Bonn.
According to the Cartel Office, the platforms primarily offer online solutions for integrated route planning. The rails play an important role in this. The mobility platforms brokered a combination of train tickets with flights, car sharing, long-distance buses or rental bicycles. However, Deutsche Bahn does not provide any forecast data for rail passenger transport for such services, such as data on delays, journey progress, train cancellations or platform changes. However, these are essential for the development of such services. The contractual restrictions of Deutsche Bahn are about advertising bans, price specifications or far-reaching discount bans.
Many of the mobility services would be unthinkable without the involvement of Deutsche Bahn, said Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt. “We are therefore of the opinion that the mobility providers have a right to, for example, traffic data from the train such as delays or cancellations. Otherwise the business models cannot function.” In addition, there are concerns about a number of DB contractual clauses. “We don’t want a single company to dominate the market and innovative mobility providers to be slowed down.”
According to the authorities, Deutsche Bahn plays a dual role. On the one hand, it is itself a market-strong mobility platform with its portal bahn.de and its app DB Navigator. On the other hand, as by far the leading rail transport company, it has the opportunity to control the use of rail transport in the offers of third parties due to its key position.
The Bundeskartellamt initiated the abuse proceedings at the end of 2019. The brief of the warning is more than 300 pages. Deutsche Bahn and certain mobility platforms will have the opportunity to comment in the coming weeks. In the end, the authority could issue a decree.
Deutsche Bahn confirmed receipt of the warning, but initially did not want to comment on it, citing a legal review. In the process, which has been ongoing since 2019, they have cooperated extensively with the Federal Cartel Office, according to a statement. “In terms of content, it’s about new types of issues relating to online sales, for which there has been a lack of established case law and official practice,” said a spokesman.
According to the company, the Omio platform was included in the process. Platform founder Naren Shaam was pleased with the assessment of the cartel watchdog. This gives you the opportunity to develop better products for customers. “We are still striving to build up a fair cooperation with Deutsche Bahn that makes economic sense for both sides,” he emphasized.
The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag also welcomed the Cartel Office’s position. It is in the interest of customers of public transport to be able to plan and book trips with different means of transport, track them using real-time data and finally pay in one process, said Matthias Gastel, spokesman for rail policy for the Greens parliamentary group, the German Press Agency . “We expect Deutsche Bahn to support this legitimate public demand instead of blocking it.”
In this context, Gastel referred to the coalition agreement. In it, the traffic light coalition announced that it wanted to oblige transport companies and mobility providers to “provide real-time data under fair conditions”. They also want to enable digital booking and payment across providers./tob/DP/nas