Belgian Post Office fined 2.5m Euros by EU for abuse of dominant position
From AFX News
The European Commission has fined the Belgian Post Office La Poste 2.5 mln eur for abusing its dominant position, an EU spokesman said.
La Poste used its monopoly in letters to grant preferential tariffs to Belgian insurance companies in the business courier market, which is not part of the permitted monopoly sectors, he said.
The fine followed a complaint by the UK company Hayes
from AFP:
The European Commission said Wednesday it was fining the Belgian postal service 2.5 million euros (2.23 million dollars) for unfairly using its monopoly powers to compete with a private British courrier service.
The postal service “has abused its dominant position by making a preferential tariff in the general letter mail service subject to the acceptance of a supplementary contract covering a new business-to-business (B2B) mail service,” the commission said in a statement.
The new service, it said, competes with the “document exchange” B2B service provided in Belgium by Hays, a private undertaking established in the United Kingdom.
The Belgian post “exploited the financial resources of the monopoly it enjoys in general letter mail in order to leverage its dominant position there into the separate and distinct market for B2B services,” the statement said.
aln/hd
