Swedish truck manufacturer Scania must pay a fine of more than 880 million euros for the prohibited price agreements that the company made with five other industry peers from 1997 to 2011. That has the European Court of Justice decided on appeal on Thursday.
The fine was already imposed on Scania by the European Commission in 2017. The company had initially refused to participate in the Commission’s investigation, but later the company appealed. The Court concludes that the fine was justified.
Scania was part of a truck cartel for more than fourteen years, which had violated European competition law. The company worked with industry peers DAF, Daimler, Iveco, Volvo/Renault and MAN to pass on the costs of emission control measures to customers. As a result, companies did not have to cut into their profits. The companies did this by delaying the introduction of technologies that had to comply with emissions regulations. They passed on the costs for these developments to customers in the European Economic Area.
The many years of collaboration came to light because a Volkswagen subsidiary, MAN, tipped off the European Commission in 2011. MAN was then exempted from a fine by the European Commission. This was followed by a series of unannounced inspections by the Commission, which identified the prohibited price agreements. At the time this was according to the news agency Bloomberg the second highest fine imposed by the European Commission in such a case.