Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-226"
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"en.20101006.16.3-226"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, I recall a few years ago asking the then Competition Commissioner whether she was aware of any evaluation being carried out on the effectiveness for consumers of fines set, and on this matter, the then Commissioner indicated at the beginning of our committee meeting that she had managed to claw back so many million euro in fines. And so the answer was that it had not been considered. It would appear that since then, you have carried out studies to find out what damages were actually incurred.
However, I would like to draw your attention to two matters. The first being that prices are fixed on the basis of a group’s turnover. However, the company that may have violated competition rules, and I am not condoning it, may be a relatively small company within the group. That is what bothers me, especially when there are separate legal entities involved.
Secondly, Commissioner, and it is you who said so and not your colleague, you often talk about the need for prevention, saying that prevention is better than repression and, in any case, more effective. So the question I ask is whether these huge fines, which always make the front page of the newspapers in which they are delivered, really have any role in terms of prevention. And I wonder whether it might not be more effective in terms of prevention to focus more on the number of checks rather than on the level of fines.
As has recently been the case in France, sentences can clearly be passed for sums of money requiring 4 or 5 000 years to be paid off. I think that we should not become fixated on these figures. We need to look specifically at the repercussions for the company, at a time of uncertain economic circumstances.
Skewing the rules of competition is not right. It is quite right that a penalty is applied but this penalty needs to be truly proportional, which is why we wanted to know whether or not the Commission would amend its rules. I think you said that this would not be the case, which is a shame."@en1
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