BEconomics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) wants to limit the power of mineral oil companies in order to prevent undesirable developments such as the current tank discount in the future. To this end, he would like to tighten antitrust law and give the Federal Cartel Office more powers, according to a paper available to the FAZ.
In the future, the authority should be able to break up corporations in an oligopoly even if the customers obviously suffer a disadvantage, but the companies cannot be proven to have genuinely abused their market power. In addition, the skimming of profits should be made easier.
The reason for Habeck’s initiative was the fierce controversy that followed the disappointment about the tank discount. For almost two weeks there has been a tax deduction on diesel and petrol of up to 35 cents per liter – but the effect has largely fizzled out. The prices at the gas station have hardly fallen.
It’s hard to prove price-fixing by oil companies
“The first records of the Federal Cartel Office on the tank discount show that the gap between crude oil and gas station prices has risen sharply since the beginning of the month,” Habeck told the “Spiegel”, which first reported on the plans. “Obviously, what many experts warned about has happened had: The mineral oil companies raked in the profit, the consumers didn’t notice anything about the tax cut.”
In politics, there is therefore a heated discussion about how the supposed “excess profits” of the mineral oil companies can be skimmed off. In addition to the excess profits tax discussed so far, this could also be achieved through the expansion of the possibilities for antitrust intervention proposed by Habeck. The Federal Ministry of Economics is dampening hopes of a quick solution: the tightening of competition law will not have a short-term effect in the current situation, but it could give the state “the necessary strength to intervene better in the future”.
Specifically, the proposals attack on two points: The change in antitrust law should create a way to unbundle the mineral oil and gas station market, among other things. In Germany there are only a few providers who benefit from high profit margins. In such oligopolistic markets, disadvantages for customers could become entrenched, with the result that prices are high and quality is poor.
At the same time, it is difficult to prove price fixing by the mineral oil companies: The prices are so transparent that the few competitors do not even have to exchange information to adjust their prices. In such a case, the Federal Ministry of Economics believes it makes sense for the Federal Cartel Office to be able to intervene earlier than before.
In a further step, the Federal Cartel Office should be able to skim off the profits more quickly, but only if there is actually an abuse of market power. The possibility already exists, but the hurdles are currently so high that it has not been possible to use it in a single case so far.
A major hurdle is that the Cartel Office always has to prove that the group is at fault. The Federal Minister of Economics would like to relax this criterion in the future. The paper does not become more concrete at this point. However, the result is clearly stated: “Anyone who profits from anti-competitive behavior at the expense of consumers must return these profits,” says the paper from the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
