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EU fines German company 68 mln euros over car heater cartel

Xinhua, June 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

The European Commission on Wednesday imposed a fine of more than 68 million euros (about 76 million U.S. dollars) on a German producer of automotive parts for its involvement in the cartel.

Stuttgart-based company Eberspaecher and the other German company Webasto "coordinated prices and allocated customers," the executive body of the European Union (EU) said in a statement.

The two companies are the only manufacturers in Europe supplying parking heaters, which are used widely in modern cars and trucks. Fuel-operated parking heaters heat a parked car and truck or pre-warm its engine.

According to the investigation started in July 2013 by the European Commission, from September 2001 until September 2011, Webasto and Eberspacher exchanged commercially sensitive information and colluded in price-fixing in the entire European Economic Area (EEA).

"For over 10 years, the only two suppliers of parking heaters in Europe colluded to avoid competing with each other. This cosy arrangement adversely affected a major part of the European automotive industry and ultimately those who buy cars and trucks," Margrethe Vestager, European commissioner in charge of competition, said.

According to the EU's 2006 Guidelines on fines, companies that infringe EU's antitrust rules may be fined up to 10 percent of their total annual turnover. Webasto avoided a more than 222-million-euro fine due to its revealing of the cartel. Endit