On 9 August 2018, the Board of the Portuguese Competition Authority opened an enquiry in the proceeding registered under no. PRC/2018/04 against the Associação dos Industriais de Panificação, Pastelaria e Similares do Norte (AIPAN), in view of evidence of infringement of the provisions of article 9 of Law no. 19/2012 of 8 May (Competition Law). This was based on a complaint lodged with the newspaper Correio da Manhã by its President, who stated that the price of bread would increase by 20%. From the evidence obtained in the investigation, relevant to the case, are the statements made by the President of AIPAN's Board of Directors and the statement made by the newspaper Correio da Manhã, whereby the President of AIPAN's Board said that the news published did not reproduce the statements made by him, while the journalist who collected the statements for the newspaper reiterated a complete reproduction of the words spoken by the Chairman of AIPAN's Board of Directors. In this context, weighing the effectiveness and benefit of the AdC’s intervention, the Authority notified AIPAN of its Preliminary Assessment of Facts, pursuant to Article 23(2) of the Portuguese Competition Act, having thus granted the Target the opportunity to submit commitments. On 2 April 2019, AIPAN submitted a set of commitments aimed at addressing the competition concerns raised by the AdC in its Preliminary Assessment of Facts.
Pursuant to Article 23(1) of the Portuguese Competition Act, the AdC may accept commitments proposed by the addressees that may prove adequate to eliminate the effects on competition arising from the practices in question, closing the proceedings by imposing conditions. Considering the content of the commitments submitted by AIPAN, it is considered that the solution of closure by imposition of conditions will be the most appropriate to safeguard the public interest of competition in the present case.
Therefore, the commitments proposed by AIPAN were submitted to public consultation, under the terms of paragraph 4 of Article 23 of the Portuguese Competition Act, and no comments were submitted. Subsequently, the AdC’s Board sent the draft of the probable direction of the decision to the complainant for comment. As the complainant did not submit any observations to the draft decision, the AdC’s management board issued a decision to close the case by accepting commitments and imposing conditions.