2023-11-16 19:05:00
Just after learning that we will no longer be able to use meal vouchers for races in 2024, Bercy is considering extending this exemption. On the other hand, restaurateurs are complaining, and in the meantime, the companies issuing these same titles have been condemned for anti-competitive practices.
Today, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the sanctions imposed by the Competition Authority on Sodexo, Edenred and Natixis in 2019. The authority had sentenced these three companies to a fine of 415 million euros for ” understanding”, as well as their common organization, the CRT (Securities Settlement Central) now closed (since February 2023).
The Court of Appeal “confirms the decision by which the Competition Authority sanctioned these players in the restaurant voucher market for anti-competitive practices”, which are “of two types”.
The first “consists of exchanges of sensitive commercial information, having lasted for several years, at a close pace, between the main competitors, having facilitated between them the adoption and implementation of lasting collusion consisting, on a continuously growing market, to ensure the stability of the global position of each of them.
The second practice “consists of the establishment of conditions of membership in the CRT, which are non-objective, discriminatory and non-transparent, and measures intended to dissuade issuers from competing through innovation by launching individually into issuance of dematerialized restaurant vouchers”.
As reported by AFP, the court of appeal recalls that the activity of the CRT consisted of processing paper titles received from restaurateurs and merchants and preparing their reimbursement on behalf of the issuers.
Edenred and Sodexo strongly contested this opinion and announced that they would appeal to the Court of Cassation.
The decision of the Court of Appeal was awaited by restaurateurs: an action was launched by the GHR employers’ union to bring together traders who feel wronged by this agreement by registering their appeals on an online platform.
“This illegal agreement could have resulted in abusive commissions taken from restaurants and businesses by issuers of meal vouchers, on each payment since 2002 and until today,” we can read. “The compensation could amount to thousands, or even tens of thousands of euros for each merchant depending on the duration and volume of meal vouchers concerned,” it is written a little further on.
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