ECHR upholds ruling on state monopoly of Hungarian textbook distribution market – UPDATE

A panel of European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judges on Tuesday rejected the Hungarian government’s appeal against a ruling that the authorities had monopolised the country’s textbook distribution market, violating companies’ property rights.

The case was brought by textbook distributors Könyv-Tár, Suli-Könyv and Tankönyv-Ker, who argued that a single company, Könyvtárellátó, had effectively monopolised the market after lawmakers centralised the management of schools in 2011 and 2012. They also argued that

the new rules had given Könyvtárellátó a 20 percent margin, compared with their margins of 3-5 percent, without compensating former market players.

In October 2018, the court ruled that the transition period after the market’s centralisation was too short for the companies in question to adapt to the changes. They were excluded from the closed tenders of the state distributor and were not offered compensation for their losses, the ruling said. Those companies subsequently lost their clientele and the market was effectively monopolised, it said.