Stampa

22 MARCH 2005 MEETING


PRESS RELEASE



PRESS RELEASE

At its customary weekly meeting, the Competition Authority has adopted the following measures.

With regard to its institutional activities regarding competition, the Authority began an investigation into the Fininvest group in respect of an alleged abuse relating to the acquisition of television rights for the serie A and B football championship matches.

The Authority also resolved to commence a fact-finding investigation into the packaging waste market. Section 12 of the Competition Act empowers the Authority to conduct general investigations when trading and pricing trends or other circumstances appear to indicate that competition has been prevented, restricted or distorted.
In this instance, within the general waste sector, "packaging waste" has become increasingly important because of the increasing volumes of waste production and consumption. Legislative decree 22/1993 (the Ronchi decree) laid down the rules governing the management of this type of waste, which included the imposition of recycling and recovery obligations on waste producers, according to the Community's "shared responsibility" and "polluter pays" principles. In order to comply with their obligations, the producers decided among other possible alternatives, to create consortia based upon the type of packaging materials used (steel, aluminium, paper, wood, plastic and glass). All the consortia are represented by the National Packaging Consortium (Consorzio Nazionale Imballaggi) which has been concluding agreements since 1998 with ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities). Under these agreements, a complex centralised system has been established to manage packaging waste, under which the local authorities, packaging consortia and producers coordinate their operations.
The Authority therefore considered it necessary to order a fact-finding investigation to analyse the competitive impact and any risks that such a system might create in the industry. In particular, it will investigate the constitution of exclusive area rights using non-transparent methods, unjustified advantages granted to certain producers rather than others, and the impact of selective waste collection organised by the local authorities on the operations of independent recyclers.

At the same meeting, the Authority ruled the advertisements of four motorcar repairers to be misleading, in that they used the expression "car body repairers-ANIA agreement", creating the impression of the existence of some contractual agreement under which the customer is eligible to obtain services on favourable terms. The investigation showed that this agreement - which, among other things, offered the possibility of having damage repaired by a garage party to the agreement without having to prepay the repair costs - had expired in December 2003. The Authority therefore considered the advertisements to be misleading because they had untruthfully claimed that an agreement existed, and publicised the existence of particular benefits under it which no longer existed.

The full text of the decisions taken by the Authority at this weekly meeting will be available in Bulletin n. 12, which may be consulted on the website www.agcm.it as from 11 April 2005.

Rome, 25 March 2005