Italian Competition Authority Fines Ferry Operators For Failure To Respect Case-Closure Commitments

On 28 January 2015, the Italian Competition Authority ("ICA") fined ten ferry services operators, active in the Gulf of Naples and Salerno, for their failure to respect commitments agreed on in a previous investigation.

In 2009, the ICA closed an investigation into a common undertaking (CLMP) among ferry operators in the Gulf of Naples and Salerno following commitments by the ferry operators not to share and exchange confidential business information and to close down their common undertaking. The undertakings concerned submitted compliance reports to the ICA in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Following complaints filed by customers in 2010 concerning increased tariffs for ferry services, the ICA decided to reopen and expand its previous investigation to include, inter alia, a new joint undertaking (Gescab), which had been created to coordinate various activities of the ferry operators, including shared ticketing.