What happened? 

On 1 April 2025, the European Commission (“Commission”) imposed total fines of around €458 million on 15 major car manufacturers as well as the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (“ACEA”). The Commission concluded that the car manufacturers had participated in a cartel concerning the recycling of end-of-life vehicles (“ELV”). 

On the same day, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) adopted a decision concerning the same practice for breaches of UK competition law and imposed fines totaling £78 million. 

Both decisions came as a shock to an industry that generally has competition law compliance high on its agenda. Both the ACEA and its members are known for having strong antitrust compliance procedures in place. 

According to the Commission, the car manufacturers had engaged in two distinct types of anticompetitive arrangements: 

1. They agreed not to pay car dismantlers for processing ELVs, considering that the recycling of ELVs is a sufficiently profitable business. The companies also shared commercially sensitive information on their individual agreements with car dismantlers and coordinated their behaviour towards dismantlers. 
2. They agreed not to promote how much of an ELV can be recycled, recovered and reused and how much recycled material is used in new cars. 

Is this a cartel? 

Neither of the two practices represent a “classical” cartel, i.e. an agreement between competitors to align their prices or to allocate customers, projects or territories between them. 

The first practice is atypical in two respects: 

• First, the alleged agreement between the participants did not relate to their sales activities, but to what could be viewed as a purchasing activity (i.e., the purchase of dismantling services). However, even though purchasing cartels are relatively rare, it is clearly established that arrangements between competitors on the prices or terms at which they purchase certain goods or services also violate competition law. 
• Second, the participants did not agree on a minimum price but apparently simply agreed that they would not pay at all for these services. As the Commission’s press release makes clear, the Commission viewed this as an agreement on a “zero price”. 

The second practice is an unusual type of “cartel” behaviour, as it relates to the parties’ advertising activities. 

The Commission also regards agreements between competitors concerning advertising as cartel-type behaviour, as such agreements can limit competition to a significant extent, and can even be used to align prices. Examples of advertising agreements found by the Commission to infringe competition rules include: agreements to exclude specific types of promotion,[1] agreements that limit marketing efforts,[2] agreements on the levels of advertising spending,[3] and agreements not to advertise or participate in sales exhibitions.[4]

Against this background, it is unsurprising that the Commission considered the agreed advertising restrictions as illegal. The restrictions prevented consumers from considering recycling information when choosing a car. This ultimately reduces the incentive for car manufacturers to go beyond the legal recycling requirements.

How could this happen?

There are some striking similarities between this case and the situation that resulted in the Commission’s exhaust emissions cartel decision of July 2021.[5] In both cases the parties had been cooperating legally over many years, and only a few specific elements that they discussed as part of this collaboration were identified as illegal and resulted in significant fines. For non-lawyers, it can be very difficult to determine exactly when a discussion crosses the line from being unproblematic to becoming illegal. In the exhaust emissions case, the uncertainty about which elements of the parties’ collaboration were ultimately legal or illegal was such that the Commission had to publish a letter listing the conduct that it considered as compliant with competition law.[6]

The conduct for which ACEA and the 15 vehicle manufacturers were fined is closely connected to the EU Directive 2000/53/EC on End-of-Life Vehicles. The Directive requires Member States to ensure that the last owner of an end-of-life vehicle can deliver it to an authorised treatment facility without any cost, and that producers meet at least a significant part of these costs.

ACEA and its members have been closely involved in the making of this Directive and in the discussions on its implementation. These joint lobbying activities were perfectly legal. But it seems that nobody noticed that, at some point, the discussions expanded into topics that are part of a company’s commercial strategy and thus must not be discussed with competitors. This happened even though the companies involved, as well as ACEA, conduct competition law training for their staff and have solid compliance processes in place.

Why are there such big differences between the parties’ fines?

The high fines for major car manufacturers such as Volkswagen (€127.7 million), Renault/Nissan (€81.5 million), Stellantis (€74.9 million), Ford (€41.5 million), BMW (€24.6 million), Opel (€24.5 million) and Toyota (€23.5 million) are primarily due to the long duration of the anticompetitive behaviour (from 2002 to 2017) and the importance of their car sales in the EU. 

Companies that had smaller car sales and/or were involved in the agreements only for a limited period of time, such as Jaguar Land Rover (€1.6 million), Mitsubishi, Honda, Mazda and Suzuki, got away with lower fines (each around €4-5 million). Moreover, Stellantis, Opel, Mitsubishi and Ford received a reduction of their fines by 20% to 50% for their cooperation. The Commission also granted a reduction to Renault/Nissan, since evidence showed that it had explicitly asked for an exemption from the agreement not to advertise the use of recycled material in new cars. 

Mercedes-Benz received full immunity from fines as it revealed the agreements to the Commission under the EU leniency programme.  

Interestingly, the parties nearly escaped the fines due to the 5-year limitation period for the Commission to open an investigation. The infringement ended in September 2017 and the Commission opened the investigation in March 2022, only 6 months before the expiry of the limitation period. 

Why did the Commission also fine ACEA? 

ACEA was fined €500,000 for having acted as facilitator of the cartel. The investigation found that the association had organised numerous meetings and contacts between car manufacturers involved in the agreements. 

It is settled case law that the facilitation of anticompetitive practices is an infringement in its own right.[7] But Commission decisions in which an industry association is fined for having facilitated a cartel are still quite rare. Back in 1994, the Commission fined the European steel association Eurofer,[8] but the fine was appealed and eventually annulled by the Court of Justice of the EU.[9] Another industry association on which the Commission may impose a fine is the European automotive starter battery association, Eurobat. In November 2023, the Commission sent a Statement of Objections to Eurobat, a service provider of Eurobat and 5 manufacturers, regarding alleged collusion to increase the prices of starter batteries. 

The situation is different at the national level. Several national competition authorities, including the competition authorities of France, Spain, Germany and Italy, have imposed fines on associations. 

Imposing fines on the participants in anticompetitive conduct and the industry association of which they are a member raises the question of whether the participants are not ultimately fined twice. As the budget of industry associations is typically insufficient for paying fines, the association has to request additional contributions from members when it has to pay a significant fine. In this situation, the members are fined twice, once directly and once indirectly through their obligation to pay an additional contribution to the association. Does this violate the ne bis in idem principle? According to established case law, this is not the case, because associations and their members do not form a single economic entity.[10] However, it is noteworthy that competition authorities seem to take this aspect into account by often imposing very low fines on the industry association. The Commission’s ELV decision notes expressly that “The fine of ACEA […] is set as a lump sum. The fine takes into account that all car producers, which are members of ACEA, have been fined individually.”

For more information or further guidance in this area, please contact Anne Federle and Álvaro López de Ochoa García. 

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[1] Commission Decision AT.39579, Consumer Detergents, para 25. 

[2] Commission Decision AT.37784, Fine Art Auction Houses, paras 76, 90 and 164. 

[3] Commission Decision AT.37614, Interbrew + Alken Maes, paras 44, 47 and 109. 

[4] Commission Decision AT.38359, Electrical and Mechanical Carbon and Graphite Products, para 152. 

[5] See Commission press release of 8 July 2021, Antitrust: Commission fines car manufacturers €875 million for restricting competition in emission cleaning for new diesel passenger cars. Available here.

[6] Commission letter following Case AT.40178, Car Emissions, of 8 July 2021. Available here.

[7] See Case C-194/14 P, AC Treuhand v Commission, of 22 October 2015, where the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed the liability of cartel facilitators. 

[8] Commission Decision 94/215/ESC of 16 February 1994.

[9] See Case C-179/99 P, Eurofer v Commission, of 2 October 2003. 

[10] See Joint Cases T-217/03 and T-245/03, FNCBV, of 13 December 2006, paras 342 to 344.