The European Commission has closed the investigation into ČD’s behavior on the Prague-Ostrava route, it found no evidence for accusations — ČT24 — Czech Television
The European Competition Authority started an investigation into possible abuse of its position vis-à-vis competitors in 2016. RegioJet, which was their first direct competitor between Prague and Ostrava, initially complained to České dráhy. Although she rejected his initiative from 2012, she later returned to the situation between railway carriers in the Czech Republic.
“ČD under the then management in 2011, when RegioJet entered the Prague-Ostravsko line a week after the yellow trains started operating, they could travel on this route thirty percent below the price level of RegioJet. Although the trains of the until then monopoly ČD had already lost money on this route. RegioJet, which had to react to this price pressure, took several years before it was able to financially stabilize the operation of its trains, and the new carriers suffered damages in the order of hundreds of millions of crowns,” argued the spokesman of the private carrier Aleš Ondrůj.
Now the investigation ends. “After a careful assessment of all relevant evidence, including information received from ČD, the Commission concluded that the evidence did not confirm its original concerns and therefore decided to close the investigation,” the EC said in a statement.
Even the year before last, it seemed that the investigation was going in the opposite direction. At the time, the commission announced that it had reached a preliminary conclusion that České dráhy sold tickets at below-cost prices, thereby violating antitrust rules. The railways, on the other hand, claimed that they had presented evidence which they claimed showed that their actions were not illegal.
The fact that the Commission ended the investigation with the fact that it did not find anything was described by the General Director of Railways, Michal Krapinec, as great news for the company. “The alleged anti-competitive behavior that should have taken place on the part of ČD was not found to be justified. Great satisfaction after years of a protracted case,” wrote Krapinec on Twitter.
České dráhy faced the risk of the arrival of competition on the Prague – Ostrava route from 2006, their first response was the established number of tickets, which enabled significantly discounted travel between regional cities. After the first competitor, Regiojet, actually appeared in 2011, ČD introduced, among other things, inter-city tickets between Prague and Ostrava, which are also significantly cheaper than standard kilometer fares, but reached many more passengers than with the original discounted tickets.
Since 2012, Leo Express has been running between Prague and Ostrava, and between 2017 and 2019, Arriva trains directly competed with them on the Prague–Přerov section. At the moment, for example, it is possible to get tickets Prague-Ostrava in second class for the afternoon of October 6 for a price of 379 crowns with RegioJet, 405 crowns with Czech Railways and 599 crowns with Leo Express.
The railroads still have a problem over the wagon purchase agreement
Although the investigation related to the prices on the Prague-Ostrava route ended favorably for České dráhy, they did not completely escape the threat of being fined by Brussels. The European Commission has yet another dispute with them. It concerns the suspicion that the Czech carrier concluded a secret agreement with the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB), which was supposed to ensure the sale of used carriages from Austria preferably to ČD, and not to RegioJet. The latter started operations thanks to vehicles from ÖBB, but later expanded the fleet by purchasing older vehicles from carriers from other countries, especially from Germany.
In June of this year, both companies accused ČD and ÖBB of committing a collective boycott between 2012 and 2016 with the aim of maintaining their position on the market and preventing the expansion of RegioJet in the Czech Republic and on the route between Prague and Vienna. ČD rejected the position of the accused, RegioJet, on the other hand, considers the EC to be correct.