Celle Higher Regional Court revokes price abuse order
The cartel panel of Celle Higher Regional Court has today revoked a price abuse order from the
Lower Saxony Regional Cartel Authority and at the same issued statements on market definition in
the gas sector with far-reaching implications. Lawyers Dr Tim Reher and Dr Christian Haellmigk from
CMS Hasche Sigle were successful in their representation of the appellant, Stadtwerke Uelzen
GmbH.
In the order which was contested the Authority had maintained that the gas provider concerned
had demanded allegedly excessive annual aggregate prices in a five-month period claiming that this
constituted an abuse. The Authority had also ordered the gas provider to reimburse the excessive
gas prices to the customers.
The cartel panel of Celle Higher Regional Court has now declared that the order is unlawful and
has revoked it. The particular grounds the court gave were that the cartel authority had been
unable to prove any market dominance of the gas provider. It held that the relevant product market
was not a market for the supply of end customers with natural gas, but a general market for all
heat providers.
Dr Reher: "This decision has far-reaching implications. The cartel authority's regulatory
function with respect to price abuse in the sector for gas supply to private households will
probably be obsolete in future owing to the market definition made by the court." Dr Haellmigk
added: "The tightening up of the Act against Restraints of Competition passed by the Bundestag will
also probably be superfluous in this respect." Celle Higher Regional Court has allowed appeal to
the Federal Court of Justice.
Contact CMS Hasche Sigle
Dr Tim Reher
Tel.: +49 (0)40 / 3 76 30 - 363
E-mail:
Tim.Reher@cms-hs.com
Dr Christian F. Haellmigk
Tel.: +49 (0)711/ 97 64 -304
E-mail:
Christian.Haellmigk@cms-hs.com
About CMS Hasche Sigle
CMS Hasche Sigle is one of the leading German law firms with more than 500 lawyers. It covers
the entire area of commercial law and provides legal advice to major German and international
companies from a wide spectrum of industry. It has offices in Berlin, Cologne, Duesseldorf,
Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Dresden, Brussels, Belgrade, Moscow and
Shanghai.
CMS Hasche Sigle is a partnership of lawyers and tax consultants; for register details / list of
partners see
www.cms-hs.com.
CMS Hasche Sigle is a member of CMS, an alliance of leading independent European law firms. With
over 595 partners, a total of 2,000 lawyers and tax consultants and around 4,200 support staff we
advise our clients at commercial locations in 48 business centres in Europe and further afield on
legal and tax issues.
In addition to CMS Hasche Sigle, the following firms are also members of the CMS alliance: CMS
Adonnino Ascoli & Cavasola Scamoni (Italy), CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo (Spain), CMS
Bureau Francis Lefebvre (France), CMS Cameron McKenna LLP (Great Britain), CMS DeBacker (Belgium),
CMS Derks Star Busmann (the Netherlands), CMS von Erlach Henrici (Switzerland) and CMS
Reich-Rohrwig Hainz (Austria). CMS has 58 offices in 25 countries around the world.
For further information on CMS Hasche Sigle see
www.cms-hs.com and on the CMS alliance see
www.cmslegal.com.
Social Media cookies collect information about you sharing information from our website via social media tools, or analytics to understand your browsing between social media tools or our Social Media campaigns and our own websites. We do this to optimise the mix of channels to provide you with our content. Details concerning the tools in use are in our privacy policy.