NMa: Dutch landscaping firm fined for cartel agreements

The Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) has imposed a fine of €138,000 on a landscaping firm based in the southern Dutch province of Limburg for violating the prohibition of cartels. The District Court of Rotterdam considered it proven that, in 2004, this undertaking and eight other undertakings met each other and harmonized their bids prior to five public tenders put out by the municipality of Maastricht. The tenders involved the maintenance of the municipal landscape. The NMa imposed a fine of well over €1 million on these eight undertakings in December 2005.

A number of these undertakings raised objections against the NMa's previous conclusion that the evidence for the involvement of the landscaping firm in question in the cartel had been insufficient. The judge weighed the evidence differently than the NMa did, and ruled that the landscaping firm had indeed violated the Competition Act, just like the other eight undertakings have that had already been fined. The NMa has therefore decided to impose a fine on landscaping firm Van der Linden Groen B.V after all.

Bid rigging constitutes an extremely severe violation of the Dutch Competition Act. A tender is the one moment when undertakings are able to, and should, compete with one another. It is essential that parties that are offering bids have no contact with each other regarding the tender, because that could severely restrict mutual competition and could even eliminate competition altogether.