ANTITRUST ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF ADS AND AUDIPRESS
PRESS RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
ANTITRUST ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF ADS AND AUDIPRESS
For exclusion of the free press from market surveys
The Italian Competition Authority, at its meeting on 28 September 2005, decided to set up an inquiry into the press associations ADS-Accertamenti Diffusione Stampa and Audipress, in order to ascertain the possible existence of agreements which may restrict competition in violation of Article 81 of the EC Treaty. The investigation must be completed by 10 November 2006.
These proceedings were provoked by the decisions of ADS and Audipress, as notified by Edizioni Metro, to refuse to include the free press in their systems of certification of circulation and surveys for readership indices. The Authority believes these choices may constitute agreements intended to impede or restrict access to survey services by publishers of free newspapers, causing unjustified discrimination against the free press in favour of the publishers of daily newspapers which are sold. Furthermore, this may restrict competition in the market for press advertising, preventing the free press from making best use of its advertising space through use of the ratings system resulting from ADS’s certification of circulation and Audipress’s sample surveys; this would seem to benefit publishers of for-sale newspapers, who also happen to be members of the two associations.
In the Authority’s view, the conduct of ADS and Audipress would seem to cause immediate damage to Metro, the notifying company, in that it does not allow that company to compete on a level playing-field with other publishers in selling advertising space: in effect, the lack of official surveys by ADS and Audipress has a negative effect on its only source of income, the sale of advertising space. Moreover, there may be a disadvantage for the end-consumer of the free press’s products, the reader, since free newspapers, financing themselves through advertising income, could offer more extensive news services.
The Authority emphasizes that similar services performed by readership survey units in most other European countries (these include, amongst others, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Holland, Greece, Spain, the United Kingdom and France) and non-European countries (the United States and Canada), usually include both paid and free daily newspapers.
Rome, 6 October 2005