BRUSSELS, July 23 (EUROPE PRESS) –
The European Commission announced on Tuesday it was launching an investigation into possible unfair competition practices against Delivery Hero and Glovo, suspecting the two food delivery companies were involved in a cartel to agree on prices and share other confidential information.
As detailed in a statement by the vice-president of the Community Executive responsible for competition, Margrethe Vestager, her services are investigating “whether the two platforms agreed to share markets rather than mutually recruit their employees.”
Therefore, if confirmed, Vestager said, such behaviour could “constitute a breach of European Union competition rules” with possible “negative consequences” for prices and the variety of offers for consumers, as well as for the employment opportunities offered to its workers.
Delivery Hero and Glovo are the two largest food delivery companies in Europe, as Brussels recalled in its statement, with the former owning a minority stake in the latter since July 2018.
Already in July 2022, Delivery Hero acquired exclusive control of another platform, and the community’s CEO is concerned about the division of geographic markets and the exchange of commercially sensitive information, such as commercial strategies, prices, capacity, costs and product specifications. Brussels is also investigating whether the two companies have agreed “not to hire each other’s employees.”
Public services believe that these actions may have been facilitated by Delivery Hero’s minority participation in Glovo, which, if confirmed, would be a violation of the community’s competition rules.
The Commission is now preparing to carry out a detailed investigation as a matter of priority, although there is no legal deadline for completing the case. It is the first time Brussels has launched an investigation of this type in the context of an operator’s minority stake in a competitor.