The Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) announced today that Norwegian electricity company Nord Pool AS, its subsidiary Nord Pool Finland Oy, Dutch company APX Holding BV and the Belgian subsidiary of APX Belpex SA, restricted competition from March 2009 to December 2015 by agreeing not to enter into each others’ geographical areas.

Nord Pool AS, APX and Belpex operated a platform and services related to the trading of electricity within short timeframes (intraday trading) in several European markets. Nord Pool Finland Oy operated the licence for the use of a cross-border intraday electricity capacity management tool called “Elbas”. They agreed not to enter geographical areas of the other parties, at a time of “developing interconnection of European electricity markets”. According to the BCA, the parties reinforced their agreement by the granting to APX and Belpex of an exclusive licence to use Elbas to couple the Belgian and Dutch markets.

The Nord Pool group was fined EUR 79,810. The BCA specified that this low amount “is not due to mitigating circumstances” but is explained by the application of former Belgian fining rules (which provided for a much lower cap on the fine defined by Belgian turnover – according to the BCA Nord Pool had “little presence in Belgium, notably because of the market sharing arrangement in question”). Since EPEX SPOT uncovered and reported the arrangement when it acquired APX and Belpex in 2015, it benefited from the BCA’s leniency programme and did not receive any fine.

For many years, energy has been one of the BCA’s priority areas for competition enforcement.