Parcel delivery cartels fined by Spanish Competition Authority

It is both a legitimate and a common practice for courier and parcel delivery companies to enter into commercialisation agreements with other enterprises in order to support their distribution networks for some services. However, the Spanish Competition Authority's investigation found that, as part of the overall framework of such agreements, some parcel delivery companies entered into "non-aggression" agreements with each other, i.e. non-compete and customer allocation arrangements.

As part of these arrangements, the companies involved agreed not to make commercial offers to any of their competitors' clients. Through this system, customers of these companies were prevented from accessing the competing services provided by the parties to the agreement. 

Customer allocation agreements and market sharing represent a very serious violation of Article 1 of both Spanish Competition Act (Law 15/2007) and Article 101 of the Treaty of Functioning of the European Union.

The "non-aggression" agreements were largely agreed orally, with the exception of the agreements concluded between ICS and CEX, TOURLINE and DHL. In these cases, the service provision agreements included a unilateral non-compete clause aimed at protecting ICS clients from the subcontracted service providers. However, the evidence collated by the Spanish Competition Authority showed that the unilateral non-compete obligations had morphed into bilateral agreements over time, which included all the clients of both parties to the arrangement, as well as potential clients. In some cases, parties were also required to withdraw offers which had already been sent to clients, or were required to offer a higher bid in order to discourage the offer being accepted.

The investigation followed a leniency application made by General Logistics Spain SL, which avoided a fine of €3.8 million as a result. 

With thanks to Irene Valín of Ashurst for her contribution.