Decision Vj-22/2005 of the Competition Council of the Hungarian Competition Authority : MÁV ZRt. (Hungarian State Railways)

The Competition Council of the Hungarian Competition Authority (Gazdasági Versenyhivatal - GVH) established in its decision, issued on 10 July 2006, that MÁV (Hungarian State Railways), a dominant undertaking on the railway market, infringed the provisions on the prohibition of abuse of a dominant position of both the Hungarian Competition Act and, after 1 May 2004, the EC Treaty.

The GVH investigated the conduct of the earlier railway monopolist MÁV, which MÁV performed in the period just before and after market liberalization. The Competition Council found that MÁV, which had a dominant position not only on the upstream market of access to rail tracks but also on the downstream market of transporting bulk goods (freight transport market), had abused its dominant position,
1. firstly, by causing unreasonable additional costs to its competitors on the freight transport market;
2. second, by hindering, impeding and delaying access to non public industrial sidetracks; and
3. third, by concluding long term transport agreements, containing exclusivity clauses, with the most significant bulk-shippers, thereby foreclosing access of new entrants to a significant part of the freight transport market. Therefore MÁV, by abusing its dominant position, endangered, in an unjustified manner, the market opening and the position on the railway freight market of new private railway entrants. The Competition Council fined MÁV HUF 1 billion (approx. EUR 3,5 million).

Budapest, 13 July, 2006

Hungarian Competition Authority
Communication Group

Further inform:
Erika Baráth
Hungarian Competition Authority
1054 Budapest, V., Alkotmány u.5.
1245 Budapest, 5. Pf. 1036
tel: (+36-1) 472-8985
email: Barath.Erika@gvh.hu
http://www.gvh.hu