The state-owned railway companies in Germany, Austria and Belgium are being punished with multi-million euro fines for having fixed freight prices among themselves.

”"Fair competition is important to give consumers the best possible deal when using sustainable transport. A cartel between the key operators offering freight services on essential rail corridors across the EU goes completely against this objective," said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a statement.

The cartel activities continued until 2014 and mainly involved German DB and Austrian ÖBB. However, the latter company's cooperation with the investigators has meant that they have avoided any fines at all, while DB has to pay 48 million euros, compared to only 270,000 euros for Belgian SNCB.

Source: TT