The European Commission has fined the American confectionery giant Mondelez €337.5 million for anti-competitive behavior in artificially inflating food prices and exacerbating the cost of living crisis in the EU, the European institution said on Thursday, UNN reports citing Euractiv.
Details
European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that the food giant, which owns several household brands including Cadbury, Oreo and Cote d'Or, illegally restricted cross-border trade and abused its dominant position in the chocolate market from 2006 to 2020.
According to a European Commission investigation that began in 2019, "[Mondelez] restricts cross-border trade in chocolate, biscuits, and coffee products within the European Union," Vestager said.
"[It] unlawfully restricted retailers from sourcing these products from EU member states where prices are lower, and this allowed Mondelēz to maintain higher prices. This caused damage to consumers, who ended up paying more for chocolate, cookies and coffee," she said.
Vestager added that Mondelēz's attempts to limit so-called "parallel" trade - where traders buy products in low-price regions to resell them in higher-price areas - violate the EU's "fundamental freedom" of barrier-free cross-border trade.
She pointed out that Mondelēz's anticompetitive practices have exacerbated financial anxiety among EU citizens at a time when many are still suffering from the impact of high inflation and a widespread cost-of-living crisis.
The crisis in the cost of living of EU citizens, as the publication points out, is taking place against the backdrop of huge profits in many large corporate sectors: Mondelez itself reported a gross profit of $13.8 billion in 2023.
In a statement, Mondelez said that the European Commission's decision "concerns historical, isolated incidents, most of which were stopped or eliminated long before the European Commission's investigation began.
"This historical issue does not reflect who we are and the strong compliance culture we strive for," the company added.