Mr Mundt, since the corona pandemic, there has been hardly anything to be heard about cartels and price fixing.

Why is it?

Helmut Bünder

Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.

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Certainly not because there are no more cartels.

In fact, the pandemic has made it more difficult to track them down and secure evidence.

We've scaled back our searches a lot.

But the relaxed times for cartel offenders are over.

We are on the road again and have already looked at one or the other suspected case.

What worries me, however, is that fewer and fewer companies come forward to appear as key witnesses.

What is the reason?

That is the downside of the regulation, which has made it easier for customers who have suffered damage for a number of years to sue for compensation for an antitrust violation.

Companies that have started proceedings as key witnesses can also be affected.

We can then waive a fine, but still face high claims for damages.

Often people prefer to remain silent rather than betray a cartel.

What are the consequences?

Around half of our antitrust proceedings are caused by key witnesses knocking on the door.

With this regulation, cartel prosecution in Germany really got going.

The requirements of evidence in court are also not easy to meet without a key witness.

At the peak in 2015, we still had 76 bonus applications, last year there were only thirteen.

This is a worrying development that we have always warned about.

But don't the damage claims also have a deterrent effect?

At first sight, yes.

The dimensions are huge too.

The claims against the truck cartel add up to more than one and a half billion euros, and against the sugar cartel it should be around 850 million euros.

But if a cartel is not discovered in the first place because the consequential risks for the key witnesses are too high, the deterrent will come to nothing and the cartel will simply continue.

How does the Cartel Office react to this?

By sharpening our other tools, such as our anonymous whistleblower system. It enables an undetected electronic exchange with a permanent contact person in the cartel office, and we have already found what we are looking for. We are currently also using screening systems. The aim is to identify patterns in tenders or elsewhere in the market that indicate illegal collusion. That depends on the database and requires sophisticated technology. However, an effective leniency program is still essential for effective cartel prosecution. I therefore hope that the new federal government will think about how we can increase the power of the leniency program again - especially at European level.

You have several disputes with Amazon. Now, in response to a dealer's complaint, the Hanover Regional Court recently clearly classified the group as dominant in the market. Why does the Federal Cartel Office shy away from it?

We don't shy away from it, but have achieved a lot against Amazon. The fact that the retailer was able to go to the regional court at all and sue Amazon under German law is due to the fact that the Federal Cartel Office implemented a change in the terms and conditions in 2019. Until then, this was only possible in Luxembourg, under Luxembourg law. Now there is a tailwind from the German civil courts. This is a great success because Germany is by far the most important market for Amazon after the USA. Establishing a nationwide dominance of the market is not always the fastest way for a cartel office, which has to put in considerable effort to justify it.