Guidelines for Compliance with European Competition Law

IGI is committed to compliance with all applicable laws, including competition laws.  These Guidelines highlight a number of key concepts of competition law and how it can be ensured that IGI’s competition compliance policy is observed at all times.Members of IGI should be aware that exchanging commercially sensitive information even in the context of a trade association is a potential breach of European competition law and/or the national competition rules of the EU Member States. 

Correspondence, diary entries, personal notes, emails, figures agreed, documents exchanged in meetings can all be taken as evidence by a competition authority.
IGI’s premises as well as the company premises of IGI’s members and the private homes of directors may be searched in an investigation by the European Commission and/or a national competition authority. Violations of competition rules can lead to serious fines on individual members – up to 10% of each member’s individual annual turnover. IGI itself can also be fined – up to 10% of the sum of the total turnover of each infringing member.

Prohibited Activities

It is strictly prohibited for IGI’s members to discuss or agree on the following:

• Prices
  Agreement on level of prices, agreement to consult on each other’s price lists or terms of sale or to exchange detailed information on each other’s production costs or to agree conditions of sale (such as discounts to be applied).
• Market Sharing
  Agreeing geographical areas where members will not compete against each other.
• Customer Allocation
  Allocating customers to whom the members will sell.    
• Output Restrictions
  Agreement to restrict output or to establish quota systems allocating a specific part of the total industry output amongst IGI’s members.   
• Bids
  Agreement on strategy for forthcoming tenders to private and public sector contracts and allocation of bids to individual members. 
• Commercially Sensitive Information
  Exchanging commercially sensitive information (strategy or investment plans, costs, know-how etc.) between competitors such as, for example :
  • Sale or purchase prices;
  • Terms and conditions of sale;
  • Market Shares;
  • Company Specific costs;
  • Company-specific current and forecast market information;
  • Sales output;
  • Marketing or production plans.

Permissible Activities

It is permissible for IGI’s members to :

• Exchange commercially sensitive information for statistics via an independent organisation which will aggregate the data and ensure that the data is sufficiently historic and that the report guarantees anonymity;
• Undertake studies/research on legislative and environmental issues or issues of common concern to the industry;
• Share costs for undertaking legitimate projects based on size of companies involved as long as there is no direct link with or exchange of commercially sensitive information such as, for example, market shares that are considered commercially sensitive (rule of thumb: less than 12 months old) or turnover figures that are not public;
• Develop industry standards;
• Analyse key economic trends;
• Promote awareness of use of IGI arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution as an expeditious means of settling intellectual property disputes;
• Negotiate preferential terms and conditions for participation in international industry fairs.

Conduct of IGI meetings

• Once the agenda has been sent out, members should feel free to consult their legal department if they consider that any topic may involve the disclosure of commercially sensitive information in breach of the competition rules.  Any objectionable item should be removed from the agenda with all the members informed of the deletion. 
• A competition lawyer should be invited to attend a meeting if there are any concerns that the topics may trespass on to sensitive areas for the members.
• At the beginning of each meeting it is recommended that the Chairperson remind all members that the meeting is to conform with European competition law and that commercially sensitive information relating to prices, markets, output and commercially sensitive activities are not to be discussed either in the meeting or afterwards by IGI’s Members.
• Avoid any presentation or discussion of topics covered by the Prohibited Activities list.
• Commercially sensitive information to be used for the compilation of statistics (such as the information listed above in the “Prohibited Activities”) should be provided before the meeting to an independent organisation for onward processing (see detailed rules on preparation of statistics below).
• Any member that considers information being provided to the meeting breaches the competition rules should interrupt the meeting and request that the information is not provided.  A minute of this objection should be made.  The members should not discuss this matter again until a legal opinion has been sought as to whether discussing this matter would be in breach of the competition rules.  
  If the members continue to discuss a matter that another member considers is in breach of the competition rules, the objecting member should leave the room and have this noted in the minutes. 
• IGI should draft the minutes of meetings carefully and accurately.