€93MILLION FINE HANDEDDOWN AGAINST COLD MEATMANUFACTURERS 67 As regards cured/dry-cured cold meat pro- difficult economic situation in the cold meatof its employees had attended. However, ducts, these exchanges took place in the sector and the individual financial difficul-the Autorité did grant the second applicant form of multiple bilateral telephone callsties experienced by some companies. Coop Group the “leniency plus" procedure, and at least 6 secret multilateral mee- which entails granting an additional exemp- tings between competitors at hotels in tion to a second applicant if that applicant Paris and Lyon (Ibis Gare de Lyon and IbisTHE DECISIVE ROLE OF provides unquestionable evidence ena- Lyon Est Bron) during which a “roundtable”THE LENIENCY PROCEDURE bling the Autorité to establish complemen- was held, retailer by retailer, to express the tary elements of fact which have a direct positioning of each competitor, the currentThe practices were revealed thanks to the impact on the determination of the amount or desired price increases and the resultsleniency procedure, which allows underta- of the financial penalty. obtained in negotiations with the distribu-kings that have participated in a cartel to tors. For example, some of the handwrittendisclose its existence to the Autorité and Decision 20-D-09 of 16 July 2020 notes seized expressly state that the pur-obtain, under certain conditions, the benefitThis decision is being appealed (case pending). pose of one of the meetings was to adopt of a total or partial exemption from financial a unified position on any price increases penalty. In this case, two groups, Campofrio (translated): "Agenda, price increases. Weand Coop, applied for leniency and provided should try to have a unified position". evidence to the investigation. The Autorité took account of the leniency In relation to cooked meat products, theseapplications when determining the level exchanges only took the form of bilateral of the fines for the companies that had telephone calls. chosen to cooperate with the Autorité, but did not grant full exemption from fines to the first-in applicant. In effect, Campofrio FINES PROPORTIONATE Group had failed to cooperate by failing to TO THE DAMAGE declare it that a meeting on cured cold meat products had been organised, which one By holding secret talks on the positions to adopt prior to negotiations, the cold meat manufacturers imposed a mode of organi- sation that replaced effective competition and which relieved the interested parties of any uncertainty about the conduct of their competitors. These practices are serious: they distorted the business rela- tions between the cold meat manufactu- rers and slaughterhouses, on the one hand, and mass-market retailers on the other. The Autorité therefore handed down a total fine of €93 million. When determining the level of the fines, the Autorité took into account the strong nego- tiating power of the mass-market retailers - which limited to a certain extent the impact of the practices on consumer prices - the Discover the case in video (in French) ACTIVATING TRANSFORMATION