During her hearing in the European Parliament last year, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes had already promised that she would be very tough on cartels.
On 10 March, Kroes used a speech to a Brussels conference to announce that a new directorate to fight cartels will be set up in DG Competition. She told her audience that she sees "the creation of this new directorate as a very concrete expression of the zero tolerance policy the European Commission is committed to implement in the face of this most damaging type of anti-competitive practice".
Cartels are arrangements between competing companies either to limit production or fix prices.
