Antitrust: Commission re-adopts decision and fines CCPL €9.44 million for its participation in retail food packaging cartels

The European Commission has re-adopted a cartel decision against CCPL and has imposed total fines of €9,441,000 on three entities of CCPL Group for their participation in three separate cartels in the retail food packaging sector. In June 2015, the Commission adopted a decision against several companies for their participation in at least one of five separate cartels in the retail food packaging sector. The companies fixed prices and allocated customers of polystyrene foam or polypropylene rigid trays, in breach of EU antitrust rules. In 2015, the Commission imposed total fines of €33,694,000 on CCPL (referred as Coopbox in the Decision of 2015) for its participation in three out of the five cartels. In July 2019, the General Court annulled the fines imposed on the entities belonging to the CCPL Group due to lack of sufficient reasoning concerning the fines reduction granted to them in the scope of the assessment of their application for inability to pay the fines under point 35 of the Guidelines on Fines (case T-522/15). The judgment did not question CCPL Group’s liability for the three cartels. Today’s decision addresses the procedural error identified by the General Court and imposes fines on three entities of the CCPL Group. This decision takes into account that the fines for each cartel shall not exceed 10% of the CCPL Group’s total turnover in the business year preceding the adoption of this decision (i.e. 2019), in line with Article 23(2) of the Council Regulation 1/2003. The amending decision will be made available under the case AT.39563 in the public register on the Commission’s competition website. More information on the Commission’s action against cartels is available in the cartels section of the competition website.