Determining the Amount of Fines for Cartel Participants in the EU

Abstract

Price-fixing, quota agreements, division of markets, the general cartel agreements, for years absorbed attention of economists and politicians who have been trying to work out effective policies to deal with this type of behavior. Despite these efforts, limiting the competition in the market through the creation of illegal agreements is still a common phenomenon in today's economy. To make sure that each participant of an illegal agreement will be justly punished multistage EC has developed a mechanism for calculating fines and systematically improves detection and level of penalties imposed to deter companies from violations of competition law.