Government announces plans to curb cartel-driven prices

The Federal Council has drafted a counter-proposal to the so-called ‘Fair Price’ initiative that wants to tackle high prices in Switzerland by limiting the power of big importers and their foreign suppliers. Judging the demands of the initiators – who want courts to examine the pricing policies of Swiss firms and to end the practice of ‘geo-blocking’ – to be too extreme but sound in principle, the government published its counter-proposal on Wednesday. Basing its text on an adaptation of existing legislation on cartels, the government says that it would restrict the measures to cases of market partitioning within Switzerland. It wants to oblige Swiss firms with “relative market power” (i.e. firms that are depended upon by others for access to goods or services) to provide their Swiss clients with access to the same foreign supply chain conditions as they themselves enjoy. In other words, firms that block a Swiss client from accessing a foreign market under equivalent ...