Maxi-fine to the ferry companies that connect the peninsula to Sardinia. The Antitrust approved fines for a total of over eight million euros against Moby, Snav, Grandi Navi Veloci and Marinvest. The companies were found guilty of having "put in place an agreement aimed at increasing the prices for passenger transport services in the 2011 summer season - reads the Authority's press release - on the Civitavecchia-Olbia, Genoa-Olbia and Genoa-Porto Torres”.
At the end of the investigation, it was ascertained that the companies “applied significant price increases, generally exceeding 65% – the Antitrust continues –, while in previous years they had followed competition-oriented strategies. In particular, in the 2011 summer season, prices increased by an average of 42% on the Civitavecchia-Olbia routes (rising from 35 to 49 euros on average) and Genoa-Olbia (rising from 57 to 81 euros), by 50% on the Genoa-Porto Torres (going from 65 to 98 euros)”.
Overall, the companies hold a very high market share on the routes involved in the investigation. "The parallelism in the price increase, found during the investigation - underlines the Antitrust - cannot be justified in any other way than with concertation: neither the transparency of the tariffs, which structurally characterizes the sector, nor the expensive fuel, which could have led to a price increase but to a lesser extent, nor do the balance sheet losses of the operators justify such a simultaneous and significant price increase".
