“We have no fear of judicial review of our decisions. We think it’s normal for a rule of law there is recourse to legal means,” he said today in parliament the President of the Competition Authority, António Ferreira Gomes, when asked about the intention of the Galp to appeal the fine of EUR 9.3 million announced last week.
The official said he was “confident of the robustness” of its decision, adding that “all decisions [the CA] have been confirmed by the Competition Tribunal, but some with reduced fine.”
On Monday, the president of Galp said it will challenge in court the fine of EUR 9.3 million imposed by the Competition Authority, which considered “formalist, unfounded and unreasonable.”
Ferreira de Oliveira found that Galp has no alternative to appeal to court to challenge a decision that passes the signal to customers that the company is irresponsible.
“Materiality is important, but we mainly use due to the reputation of Galp,” said in disseminating the press conference of the 2014 oil results.
The investigation of the PCA revealed that the Galp Energia group companies prohibit their gas cylinders distributors to sell out of a geographical area defined in the contract, thereby preventing them from competing with other distributors located in neighboring or nearby territories.
To the Competition Authority, this competitive constraint is likely to penalize consumers with higher prices, since the bottled gas distributors Galp Energia can charge prices and commercial conditions without any competitive pressure from other competing distributors.
Now Ferreira da Oliveira recognizes that the clause prevents distributors to sell gas outside the defined geographical area in the contract is illegal, but says that in practice this formality was not applied.
More, explained that “Galp has done everything to change those contracts, but contracts only change when the two parties are in agreement,” adding that dealers refuse to do so because they understand that “that is a clause active of them. ”
The manager also pointed out that contracts with that restriction have “some of them more than 60 years,” being “more than 80% prior to 2000″.
“The Competition Authority itself internally recognizes that this clause had no impact in terms of the consumer price,” he said, referring to the 199 gas distributors Galp respondents’ five said they would not sell outside their exclusive area, because the contract does not allowed “.
“The questions were addressed so that they responded well and, therefore, the PCA applied to Galp the largest fine in history,” he concluded.
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