ARA and EU Commission Settle Antitrust Proceedings

VIENNA, September 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Agreement reached to protect ARA's successful recycling scheme and the interests of businesses, customers and employees  

An agreement has been reached in the European Commission's six-year proceedings against the member-owned non-profit company Altstoff Recycling Austria AG (ARA) for the alleged abuse of a dominant market position in the collection of metal and light-weight packaging from households.

The settlement represents the final chapter in a ten-year-old conflict that ARA inherited in 2008 due to its merger with ARGEV Verpackungsverwertungs GmbH. The central bone of contention had been whether the setting-up of a parallel collection infrastructure for light-weight and metal packaging in addition to the existing ARA collection scheme was technically, legally and economically feasible. Such duplication has been expressly prohibited under the 2013 amendment to the Austrian Waste Management Act, so that the outcome of the Commission proceedings is of mainly "historical" interest.

ARA decided to settle the case out of a sense of responsibility to businesses, customers and employees and to protect its highly successful recycling scheme. After detailed consideration, the General Assembly concluded that the settlement of proceedings would be much better for their customers and the company itself than continuing the conflict. The decision was based on several factors: incomplete legal review and long duration of the proceedings if ARA brought an action for the annulment of a Commission's decision before the General Court of the European Union; considerable maximum amount of the fine that the Commission might have imposed. ARA still maintains that ARGEV's conduct was not the reason why its competitors entered the market only after the amendment to the Waste Management Act had taken effect. The EU Commission's decision leaves this question open.

The settlement of the proceedings includes payment of a € 6,015 million fine, which will be fully paid from the group's equity capital and does not impact ARA's tariff rates.

About ARA AG 

Altstoff Recycling Austria AG (ARA) is Austria's market leading packaging compliance scheme. It organises the collection, sorting and recovery of packaging waste in all of Austria. ARA is owned by Austrian businesses and operates on a non-profit basis.

ARA provides consumers throughout Austria with around 1.6 million bins for the collection of packaging made of paper, plastic, metal and glass. In addition, 1.5 million households are covered by a door-to-door collection service for light-weight packaging. In 2015, ARA managed more than 760,000 tonnes of packaging, which helped save around 600,000 tonnes in CO₂ equivalents.

The ARA group consists of ARA AG, its service subsidiary ARAplus, Austria Glas Recycling, ARES, ERA, and NetMan. For more information, go to: http://www.ara.at

For further information, please contact:
Sandra Holzinger
Altstoff Recycling Austria AG
Tel.: +43 1-599-97-300
E-mail: sandra.holzinger@ara.at