Mercedes was a key witness – cartel penalty: BMW and VW pay 875 million euros


The EU Commission has imposed competition penalties in the three-digit million range totaling 875 million euros against BMW and Volkswagen. Because of illegal agreements on the Adblue tanks in their cars, BMW is said to pay almost 375 million euros, Volkswagen a good 500 million euros.

Adblue tanks hold a urea solution in newer generation of catalytic converters in diesel cars. The mixtures ensure more efficient exhaust gas cleaning and thus a reduction in harmful nitrogen oxide emissions. “All companies have admitted their participation in the cartel and agreed to a settlement,” it said in a communication from the EU Commission.

Daimler gets away with it without a penalty
This does not fully exhaust the possible sentence. In theory, payments of up to ten percent of annual sales can be due. As the third member of the league, Daimler does not have to pay anything because the Stuttgart-based company was the first to make itself available as a key witness – otherwise 727 million euros would have been due. At VW, the fine would have been around twice as high without a key witness discount.

BMW announced on Thursday that Brussels had entered “uncharted territory” in terms of antitrust law. The subject of the investigation was not price or area agreements – nevertheless, the EU Commission applied the standards of such a “classic” cartel when calculating the fine and only considered the novelty of the case by means of a discount. Despite the allegations that have largely been dropped, this approach leads to the amount of the fine that has now been set.

The Board of Management agreed to this fine with the present settlement. BMW had already promised this when the group had reduced the provisions for a penalty.

In 2019, BMW had set aside a provision of 1.4 billion euros due to the allegations, of which around 1 billion euros had already been released in May of this year because the Commission had completely dropped certain allegations against BMW.