EU Imposes 337.5 Million Antitrust Fine On Oreo Maker Mondelez

On Thursday, The European Union imposed a 337.5 million euro ($366 million) fine on US confectioner Mondelez, for restricting sales of their products within this bloc.

Speaking about sale restriction, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager accused Mondelez of restricting cross-border trade of their products within the union.

The EU fined Mondelez “because they have been restricting the cross-border trade of chocolate, biscuits, and coffee products within the European Union. “said Margrethe Vestager.

As a result, these restrictions, it is gravely affecting the consumers, who unfairly pay more for chocolate, biscuits, and coffee disclosed Vestager to reporters.

In the end, she emphasized, that it’s a key concern for European citizens, especially amidst the time, when high inflation is already causing cost-of-living crisis.

Also, The EU’s antitrust regulator has accused the company of the abuse of its dominant position in breaching bloc’s rules.

Saying, the US confectioner indulged “anticompetitive agreements or concerted practices” between 2012 and 2019. One of the practices included the limiting of wholesale customer’s ability to resell products and later, ordering them to enforce higher prices for exports in comparison to sales within the country.

So, in order to deal with this issue, bloc’s investigators later carried out raids in Mondelez’s office across Europe in November 2019.

As per the commission, between 2015 and 2019, Mondelez had allegedly declined to supply German trader with chocolates, to avoid its resale in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania, where they were sold at higher prices.

Earlier, it had also restricted supply of certain chocolate products in Netherlands, so that it doesn’t import to Belgium, where the confectionery was selling at a higher price.

But so far, Mondelez has insisted, that the fine related to these incidents have already been remedied or have ceased ahead of the commission’s investigation.