According to information received by the Finnish Competition and Consumer Authority (FCCA), a veterinary clinic operating in Tampere had contacted its competitors about the pricing of a tender for the small animal emergency service. Contacts between competitors do not appear to have led to price increases. The FCCA urged veterinary clinics to pay attention to the requirements of competition law, as even proposing a cartel is prohibited under the competition rules.
The City of Tampere and the Municipality of Pirkkala tendered the small‑animal emergency service required under the Act on Veterinary Services for their respective service areas in the summer of 2025. According to the FCCA’s information, a Tampere clinic contacted representatives of two competing clinics in March 2025, before the tender was published, and suggested that prices for veterinary services should be raised because of increased costs. The company also proposed that a minimum price be set for the upcoming tender.
Each undertaking must independently determine its own conduct on the market and its pricing. Competing undertakings must not, directly or indirectly, contact one another to try to influence a competitor’s market behaviour or to disclose their own planned market conduct.
The conduct may be regarded as a bid‑rigging cartel if competing undertakings agree, for example, on prices or price increases to be offered in a procurement. Even the mere exchange of information about planned bids or target prices can amount to bid‑rigging.
Cartels are the most serious forms of restrictions of competition. They cause economic harm to customers, markets and society. Bid‑rigging raises the prices of goods and services purchased with public funds.
A company must clearly publicly distance itself from any cartel proposal
Proposing a cartel is prohibited regardless of whether the undertakings contacted subsequently fol-low or confirm the proposed conduct. The starting point is that intercompany contacts are likely to affect their market behaviour.
If a company receives a cartel proposal related to its business, the company should clearly publicly distance itself from the proposal or notify the FCCA. If the company merely ignores the contact, this is not considered as distancing itself from the cartel proposal but rather a silent acceptance of the proposal.
In serious cases of competition restrictions, the FCCA typically requests that the Market Court impose a penalty payment on the undertakings that took part in the conduct. However, the FCCA must prioritise its tasks and use its resources primarily for investigating and litigating restrictions that have national economic significance.
In this case, the contacts between the competitors do not appear to have led to higher prices in the public procurement of the small‑animal emergency service, as the winning bid was considerably cheaper than the previous comparable contract. Instead of investigating the matter in greater detail, the FCCA urged the parties in advisory letters to carry out a competition‑law self‑assessment of their business practices and to ensure that they comply with competition law.
The FCCA has closed its file on the matter. It may reopen the case if it receives new information giving reason to suspect a significant restriction of competition.