Ten car manufacturers and two industry groups have been sentenced to a fines of a combined total of nearly 78 million pounds sterling for retaining information on recycling vehicles.
BMW, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot Citroen, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, Vauxhall and Volkswagen, and two trade organizations were fined by competition and the UK markets (CMA).
Car manufacturers and commercial groups have agreed to retain customer information concerning the amount of their cars that could really be recycled.
It comes then that the European Commission also distributed fines totaling 458 million euros (382.7 million pounds sterling) to 15 carnets, as well as the European Automobiles Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), to break recycling laws.
“We will not tolerate any kind of cartels, and this includes those who remove the awareness of customers and the demand for products more suited to the environment,” said Teresa Ribera, executive vice-president of the European Commission’s own energy transition arm.
The CMA said, with the exception of Renault, that car manufacturers have also agreed that they would not say to customers which percentage of their cars were made from recycled materials.
The regulator added that most of the car manufacturers involved did so for 15 years from 2002.
He said eight of the manufacturers he had sentenced to a fine made a “buyers’ cartel” with other car manufacturers who join later.
The buyers’ cartel meant that they had agreed not to pay the companies to manage the recycling of their customers’s vehicles once the cars were considered at the end of their lives.
The ACEA and the Society of Motor Manufacturers (SMMT) were involved in these illegal agreements, the AMC said.
Car manufacturers are legally required to include details on recyclability in their advertisements so that customers can take it into account before buying it.
All car manufacturers and industry organizations involved, with the exception of Mercedes-Benz, which have been granted to the immunity of penalties, have now settled with the CMA.
This means that they admitted to having participated in this illegal behavior and agreed to pay the fines.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said that it had completely cooperated in the CMA investigation and had accepted the conclusions.
He declared in a press release that he took his obligations in matters of competition law “very seriously” and “entirely examined and strengthened his protocols to protect current and future compliance”.
