In an interview with PaRR, President Jacques Steenbergen labelled RPM as an absolute enforcement priority in order to build up a competition culture among smaller companies. He confirmed that the Belgian NCA pushed for maintaining the hardcore list of the Vertical block Exemption Regulation, which places RPM on the black list.
His concern seems to be the possible cumulative effect of RPM practised by many SMEs that believe that individually they are too small to have a material impact on competition with their RPM practices.
The viewpoint expressed by Steenbergen does not come as a surprise in the light of the series of RPM decisions recently issued by a number of National Competition Authorities. These decisions were reported previously by the Distribution Law Center (available here: Czech Republic, France, Denmark, the Netherlands).
Create your DLC account now and receive our Countdown Newsletter as of 7 December 2021.
Sign in to post comments