Why has the Authority not responded in the past? – VG

Norgesgruppen, Coop and Rema 1000 received an April response deadline. In the meantime, we can guess who will finally have the pleasure of covering that bill, if the supervisory authority succeeds.

Despite the seriousness of the accusation and the enormous amount of the infringement fee, the Norwegian Competition Authority does not necessarily have an obvious case. On the contrary, it is not clear what is being reacted so strongly now, given that the mutual chain agreement on which the audit is based has been known for ten years.

We believe that the Virke trade association and the affected players are correct when they point out that the Norwegian Competition Authority could have reacted at a stage much earlier if it was thought that there was a serious need for guidance or change in practice.

The core of the dispute is an industry rule that the Big Three agreed to in 2010. In doing so, they have given so-called price hunters access to each other’s stores so they can record prices on competing shelves. While the Norwegian Competition Authority believes that this has raised the price level of many products, the chains themselves believe that it has contributed to more competition and cheaper products for consumers.

It is worth remembering that the agreement was once signed in collaboration with the then Consumer Ombudsman, today the Consumer Agency, and that Norgesgruppen, Coop and Rema rescinded it earlier this year. They believe that this type of price search among competitors is no longer so important. There are also a wide range of mobile apps that do the work for them.

A clarification from the Norwegian Competition Authority on Tuesday affirms that its reaction is based on “a common understanding between the chains where they have developed a practice” which has been to push prices. The audit may be based on compromising material from the industry raid in 2018, but otherwise it is difficult to see how they will hold up in court, where this will end, for the imposition of fees of this magnitude.

As recently reported by Dagens Næringsliv, there is reason to investigate why food in Norwegian shops is “inexplicably expensive”, because the level cannot be explained by either customs duties or taxes. Most of what we consume is not covered by agricultural tariffs.

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A glance at the so-called target prices for agriculture indicates that it is also not the producer who gets the larger part of the final sum when the consumer is in the box of Kiwi and has to pay for the shopping basket. But some people obviously take this profit, and one should be blind not to see that some links in this food chain have been given wider margins than others.

Competition authorities certainly have a job to do in this way and of course one should monitor the three chains that dominate the Norwegian grocery industry. Therefore, we do not believe that the Norwegian Competition Authority is fully on the ground in its pursuit of price formation in the domestic food industry. But right here they are possibly on the wrong ground.