Spanish state-owned Renfe Operadora and its rail freight subsidiary Renfe Mercancías will have to pay a fine of over 49,9 million euros for “concerted practices” which negatively affected competition. According to official documents accessed by RailFreight.com, the country’s Court of Appeals confirmed a sentence from 2017 based on contracts signed between Renfe and Deutsche Bahn (DB) in 2008, appearing to disadvantage the latter.
The news was warmly welcomed by the Spanish Association of Private Railway Companies (AEFP), which first denounced the issue in October 2017. “It is a milestone as it is the first firm conviction of the public operator. The AEFP will initiate a lawsuit for damages once the judgment is final”, AEFP President Juan Diego Pedrero told our publication.
It all started with the Transfesa deal
The story begins in 2007, when Renfe sold Transfesa to DB, signalling the German group’s entrance into the Spanish rail freight market. In 2008, the two groups entered a series of agreements, which have now been deemed disruptive to competition. For example, one of them included Renfe being the exclusive or preferred traction provider for Transfesa. This, the court has now ruled, removed the potential for DB to enter the Spanish rail freight traction market independently.
However, a case against Renfe only started in 2017, when AEFP brought it up with the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC). The CNMC then started a case, with a first court decision against Renfe made the same year. Back then, the AEFP brought two charges against Renfe, which resulted in two fines: one for 49,96 million euros, which was now confirmed, and one for 15,13 million euros, which was dismissed. It needs to be mentioned that the second charge was dismissed due to procedural issues, not because the company’s conduct was found legal, the document specified.
For the following five years, the case kept going back and forth with appeals, constantly postponing a final decision. In January 2023, Renfe submitted its final attempt with the Court of Appeals, which has now deliberated and confirmed the sentence for the first charge against the state-owned group: a nearly 50-million-euro fine. According to the ruling, Renfe adopted a strategy “that would have sought to preserve itself following the entry into the market of an operator of the size of the Deutsche Bahn Group”.