Cartel between taxi companies at Otopeni Airport: two large federations and 18 companies were fined by the Competition Council
The Competition Council sanctioned several organizations in the field of taxi transport and 18 companies, after finding the existence of an anti-competitive agreement aimed at removing from the market an application for brokering taxi orders within the Henri Coandă International Airport. The cumulative fines amount to almost 4 million lei.
Two large federations and 18 taxi companies were fined by the Competition Council
The Competition Council imposed sanctions in the total amount of 3,976,789 lei (approximately 779,762 euros) to the Confederation of Operators and Authorized Transporters from Romania (COTAR), the Federation of Romanian Transport Operators (FORT) and a number of 18 taxi companies, after ascertaining their involvement in an anti-competitive understanding on the market of online taxi ordering services for Otopeni Airport.
According to the authority, the parties involved would have coordinated their actions for the removal from the airport premises of the Clever Tech SRL company, which operated an aggregator application through which the offers of several taxi drivers were centralized.
The investigation showed that organizations and taxi companies requested the Bucharest Airports National Company (CNAB) to remove the Clever application from the touch-screen terminals used for taxi orders at the airport.
The sanctioned taxi companies are the following: Cristaxi Service SRL, Auto Cobălcescu SRL, Meridian Taxi SRL, As Taxi 2003 SRL, Compania de Taximetrie Speed Taxi SRL, D`Artex Star SRL, Autogeneral SA, Lion Quick Taxi SRL, Street Taxi SRL, Simbol Fly Consulting SRL, Speed Taxi SRL, Bageti Star SRL, Dinamic Taxi SRL, Dispecerat Perfect SRL, Fast Transport Auto SRL, Grand Auto Taxi SRL, Grant Taxi Service SRL and Grant Taxi Speed SRL.
FORT, Auto Cobălcescu SRL, Meridian Taxi SRL, Cristaxi Service SRL and Grand Auto Taxi SRL admitted the commission of the investigated anti-competitive act.
At the same time, the competition authority imposed a series of conditions on CNAB aimed at ensuring the access of all interested operators to the airport premises, in a transparent, non-discriminatory and predictable way.
As a result, CNAB added a series of commitments[1] aimed at identifying and renting spaces for the location of touch-screen terminals without interfering with the types of applications running.
In addition, CNAB will allow passenger transport services from the airport to be carried out both through aggregator applications and through ride-sharing applications, without them being limited exclusively to taxi transport, respectively to the IT applications of taxi companies.
Also, the rental of the spaces for the location of the touch-screen terminals will be awarded exclusively through a call auction organized by the Romanian Commodity Exchange, and interested companies will be able to submit bids for several spaces, but they will be assigned only one space within the same auction procedure, with the aim of ensuring the largest possible presence of companies active on the market and diversified services for passengers.
Competition law prohibits any agreements between companies that have the effect of restricting or distorting market competition.
