Tabaqueira enquiry ordered

Portugal’s Supreme Court of Justice has ordered the country’s competition regulator to set up an inquiry into the Portuguese subsidiary of Philip Morris International, Tabaqueira, according to a Portugal News story.

The ruling followed allegations by the Portuguese Tobacco Wholesalers’ Association (APAT) concerning the ‘abuse of dominant position and abuse of economic dependency’ by Tabaqueira.

The APAT said the court’s decision was in line with its request that the Supervision and Competition Court make the Competition Regulator set up an inquiry into Tabaqueira for what the APAT considered to be anti-competitive behaviour in the tobacco distribution market.

The case began in 2011, when APAT and its members presented a complaint to the European Commission against Tabaqueira ‘for abuse of dominant position and abuse of economic dependency’.

The complaint is said to have centred around what APAT saw as the ‘unilateral decision by Tabaqueira in its favour to crush the wholesalers’ margins and other abusive practices regarding discrimination between means of payment’.