• The President of the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Tomasz Chróstny, has charged seven waste collectors with tender collusion.

• He suspects that the consortium they established was used to limit competition in public contracts organised by the municipalities of Wielkopolska.
• The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection will soon take further action on the waste market.

One of the forms of entrepreneurs taking part in the tender is to create a consortium composed of various companies. While antitrust law allows for this form of cooperation, if the participants in the consortium are able to carry out the contract themselves, they should do so without any cooperation restricting competition. The same applies if it is possible to provide services with fewer partners than the number of partners in the consortium.

According to Chróstny, this could have been the case in 15 tenders for the collection, transport and management of municipal waste for 2018-2022 organised by the Inter-municipal Association “Waste Management of the Poznań Agglomeration”, covering the city of Poznań and eight surrounding municipalities. In most cases, a consortium of seven entrepreneurs won: Remondis Sanitech Poznań, SUEZ West, Artur Zys Communal Services, KDS, EKO-TOM Turguła, ORDO Poznań and Vikom Communal-Transport Services. The President initiated antitrust proceedings against these companies.

He suspects that in this case the consortium could only serve to conclude an agreement restricting competition. They are mostly formed by large companies, which could launch a tender alone or in a consortium with fewer entities. After winning the tenders, the companies, as a rule, operated on their own in the area that they had served in the previous years. This may also confirm that they were able to carry out the contract without the help of other entities and the consortium was set up in order to avoid competitive tendering.

’We suspect that the creation of a consortium could only be a pretext to conclude tender collusion and avoid competition for contracts. Lack of competition in the tender always means higher prices. Consequently, the municipalities of Wielkopolska and their residents could overpay for waste collection. Such practice is unacceptable. If our suspicions are confirmed, entrepreneurs are facing harsh penalties amounting to up to 10% of their annual turnover’, says Tomasz Chróstny.

Fair competition between entrepreneurs at different levels of the waste management market eventually means lower prices that households pay for the collection of waste. That is why this industry is closely monitored by the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. In August last year, the office published a report on waste management in all the municipalities. Soon, the President of the Office for Competition and Consumer Protection will present another analysis, this time regarding Regional Waste Treatment Plants (RIPOKs). The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection examined their activities in terms of both market position and pricing policy, as well as details of treatment technologies and quantities of waste received. The report will be presented in May this year.

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