Head of the Competition Authority: CJEU ‘humiliates’ Hungarians with Spar ruling
Csaba Balázs Rigó, the head of the Hungarian Competition Office (GVH), said in an interview with the daily Magyar Nemzet published on Tuesday that the recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in favour of supermarket chain Spar “humiliated” Hungarians and showed the court put profit ahead of affordable staples.
In its ruling, issued earlier in September, the CJEU said that price caps Hungary’s government earlier mandated for staples such as sugar, flour, cooking oil, pork and milk, to keep inflation down “undermined fair competition” and were contrary to EU law. The ruling was made after Spar Magyarorszag contested a fine for violating rules on inventory levels for the affected products.
Rigo told Magyar Nemzet that GVH‘s follow-up probe to determine whether Spar Magyarország had complied with voluntary commitments to expand its local supplier base was unrelated to the CJEU ruling.
He said:
From my point of view, there is only one way of looking at the matter, and that is this. The government, be it any government of any country, has a responsibility to protect the people of that country from unexpected economic situations that threaten to have serious consequences. To achieve this objective, the periodic use of the trench warmer was an appropriate instrument. In response, the CJEU has now stated that, as they have said, the supply chain is more important than the consumer, in other words, in an emergency, the interests of the multinationals take precedence over guaranteeing the subsistence needs of Hungarian society. I find this unacceptable. It is also strange why the Hungarian court sent the case to the EU and did not rule on it itself.
As we wrote before, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that price caps Hungary’s government earlier mandated for staples such as sugar, flour, cooking oil, pork, and milk to keep inflation down were contrary to EU law, read details HERE.
After this strong statement, the question arises whether the head of the Competition Authority can make an objective decision on the competition situation in Hungary on this or other issues?
On the other topic we wrote earlier, the CJEU imposed a substantial EUR 200 million fine on Hungary for violating EU legislations. There is a daily additional EUR 1 million fine for failure to comply with the judgement of the CJEU, details HERE.
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