Eurotunnel protests for the preliminary outcome of an investigation antitrust EU that would impose the arrest warrant of MyFerryLink



The preliminary outcome of the investigation of the EU commission on the new marine activities realized by the Eurotunnel group, that it manages the railway tunnel under the English Channel, activity that the company has started last year after to have acquired assets, between which the ships, of the SeaFrance company it mails in liquidation ( on 12 June and 16 July 2012), it is that such realized marine services through the new MyFerryLink company determine a reduction of the competition and that therefore they must be removed from the market.

An appraisal contested from Eurotunnel, that today it has sent to the EU commission own observations with respect to the preliminary outcomes of the investigation. The group has been declared "surprised in learning that, to the aim to guarantee the competition, it is in the first instance necessary that an operating decoy from the market. As a result of the liquidation of SeaFrance - it has emphasized Eurotunnel - the group has taken part to a procedure of open and transparent contest for assets of the dead the organized company from the Commercial Court of Paris. The Eurotunnel group has introduced the best one offered. As a result of a deepened analysis by the French authorities for competition - it has still found the group - the acquisition is approved of with some limitations, in particular that not to commercialize offered cumulative tunnel-ferry".

Between the reliefs evidenced from Eurotunnel, the group has emphasized as DFDS, the shipowning group that was opposite to the cession of the three ferries of the SeaFrance to the Eurotunnel ( on 12 June 2012), it has successively announced a potenziamento of the operated marine services in the English Channel ( on 26 September 2012). According to Eurotunnel, currently the quota MyFerryLink in the market of the transport of heavy vehicles on the route that connects To have with continental Europe is pairs single 4% (with the objective to arrive to 8%) regarding 32% of P&O and to 22.4% of DFDS.

Eurotunnel considers that the income on the market of MyFerryLink has not had the effect to reduce the competition, but in case to therefore increase it.

Remembering at last that the Commercial Court of Paris has prohibited the sale or any other form of alienation of acquired the SeaFrance ships from Eurotunnel to the aim to safeguard the places of work it is in France that in the created United Kingdom with the constitution of the new company MyFerryLink, Eurotunnel has wished that the EU commission does not prescribe limitations that can turn out disproportionate or inapplicable from the legal point of view.