The EU imposes an antitrust fine of EUR 337.5 million on Oreo manufacturer Mondelez

The EU on Thursday imposed a 337.5 million euro ($366 million) fine on Mondelez, the U.S. confectioner behind major brands including Toblerone and Oreo, for restricting product sales within the 27-nation bloc.

Mondelez, formerly Kraft, is one of the world’s largest producers of chocolate, cookies and coffee, with revenues of $36 billion last year.

The EU fined Mondelez “because it restricts cross-border trade in chocolate, biscuits and coffee products within the European Union,” said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

“This harmed consumers who ended up paying more for chocolate, biscuits and coffee,” she told reporters in Brussels.

“This case concerns food prices. This is a key issue for European citizens, and even more obvious in times of very high inflation, when many of them are facing a cost of living crisis,” she added.

The free movement of goods is one of the key pillars of the EU single market.

Mondelez’s brands also include Philadelphia cream cheese, Ritz crackers and Tuc salty cookies, as well as Cadbury, Cote d’Or and Milka chocolate brands.

The Commission, the EU’s powerful antitrust regulator, said Mondelez “abused its dominant position” by violating EU rules.

The confectioner was found to have engaged in “anti-competitive agreements or concerted practices” between 2012 and 2019, including restricting wholesale customers from reselling products and requiring them to charge higher export prices compared to domestic sales.

The EU investigation dates back to January 2021, but suspicions led the bloc’s investigators to raid Mondelez offices across Europe in November 2019.

According to the commission, between 2015 and 2019, Mondelez also refused to deliver to a trader in Germany to avoid reselling the chocolate in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania, “where prices were higher.”

It also stopped shipments of some chocolate products to the Netherlands “to prevent them from being imported into Belgium, where Mondelez was selling these products at higher prices.”

Mondelez, however, insisted the fine was related to “historical, isolated incidents, most of which had stopped or been remedied long before the commission’s investigation.”

“Many of these incidents were related to business transactions with brokers, which are typically conducted through sporadic and often one-off sales, and a limited number of small distributors developing new business in EU markets where Mondelez has no presence or no presence in the market. market for the appropriate product,” he added in a statement.

Last year, the giant set aside EUR 300 million for the fine.

“No further measures to finance the fine will be necessary,” he said.