Cyprus Competition Law: Administrative Court Annuls €972,512 CPC Decision in Limassol Concrete Tender Case
On 30 September 2026, the Administrative Court annulled in its entirety a decision of the Cyprus Commission for the Protection of Competition (“CPC” or the “Commission”) concerning alleged anti-competitive conduct in three Public Works Department tenders for the supply of ready mixed concrete in Limassol.
The Commission's decision of 18 July 2018 had found seven ready mixed concrete producers liable for infringements involving price fixing and the allocation of geographical areas and imposed fines totalling €972,512.
Papantoniou & Papantoniou LLC represented the Applicant in Application No. 1870/2018, one of eight joined recourses challenging the Commission's decision.
The judgment addresses important principles concerning the standard of reasoning required in competition law decisions, the assessment of alternative explanations put forward by undertakings and access to information relied upon in competition proceedings.
The CPC decision under challenge
The Commission had found infringements of sections 3(1)(a) and 3(1)(c) of the Protection of Competition Law 13(I)/2008 in connection with Public Works Department Tenders.
According to the Commission, the undertakings had engaged in agreements concerning the fixing of prices and allocation of geographical areas.
The Applicant had never been a member of the Limassol Concrete Association, which featured prominently in the Commission's investigation. Nevertheless, the Commission found the Applicant liable in relation to the second and third tenders and imposed a fine of €50,018.
The Commission relied, among other matters, upon the Applicant's corporate links with another concrete producer and the previous employment of an individual who had attended meetings of the Association.
The Administrative Court identified significant deficiencies in the reasoning supporting the Commission's conclusions.
Information exchange does not, without more, establish price fixing
An important part of the judgment concerns the distinction between evidence of an exchange of information and proof of the specific anti-competitive conduct ultimately found by a competition authority.
The Court accepted that the material before the Commission revealed some form of information exchange.
The infringements found by the Commission, however, were more specific: agreements to fix prices and allocate geographical areas in identified public tenders.
The Court found that the Commission's decision did not adequately explain how the evidence before it established those particular infringements.
The Court declined to undertake that exercise itself. Doing so would effectively have required the Court to reconstruct and reassess the administrative material in order to supply reasoning that should have appeared in the Commission's own decision.
This distinction is particularly important in competition proceedings. Evidence capable of establishing contact or an exchange of information between undertakings does not dispense with the need to demonstrate, and properly explain, the particular infringement attributed to each undertaking.
Alternative explanations submitted by an undertaking must be examined
The judgment also addresses the treatment of evidence and alternative explanations submitted during a competition investigation.
The level of the tender prices formed an important part of the Commission's case.
The Applicant had submitted a detailed cost analysis challenging the Engineer's estimate and explaining differences between pricing in public-sector tenders and pricing in private-sector projects. Other applicants had also submitted expert evidence addressing the pricing relied upon by the Commission.
Although these submissions were recorded, the Commission did not substantively examine them in reaching its decision. The Administrative Court reiterated that arguments subsequently advanced by counsel cannot remedy deficiencies in the reasoning of the administrative decision itself.
Where an undertaking puts forward a concrete and potentially material alternative explanation, the administrative authority must address it in its own reasoning.
Access to historic tender information and confidentiality
A further issue concerned access to third-party tender prices.
The Commission had refused the applicants access to certain bid information on confidentiality grounds. By the time access was requested, however, the information was more than five years old.
The Court held that information of that age is presumed to have lost its confidential character.
A general reference to possible harm to competitors was insufficient. The Commission was required to provide specific reasoning justifying the continued confidential treatment of the information.
The issue is significant for the procedural rights of undertakings involved in competition investigations, particularly where access to historic commercial information may be necessary to challenge the evidential basis of an infringement finding.
Annulment of the CPC decision
The Court concluded that the deficiencies in reasoning affected the lawfulness of the Commission's findings against every undertaking in relation to the first two tenders and against three undertakings in relation to the third
All eight recourses succeeded.
The Commission's decision of 18 July 2018 was consequently annulled in its entirety, with costs awarded to the applicants.
Why the judgment matters for Cyprus competition law
The judgment is significant for both competition enforcement and administrative law in Cyprus.
A finding that conduct constitutes a restriction of competition by object does not remove the obligation to establish the infringement on the evidence and to adequately explain how that evidence supports the conclusions reached.
The economic and legal context also remains relevant to that assessment, as reflected in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
More fundamentally, liability must be established against the particular undertaking concerned.
Membership of an association, corporate relationships, employment connections and communications between market participants may all form part of the evidential context. They do not, without the necessary evidential and analytical link, establish that a particular undertaking participated in a particular anti-competitive agreement.
The judgment therefore reinforces three important requirements in Cyprus competition proceedings: the evidence must support the specific infringement alleged; material explanations and evidence submitted by the undertaking must be examined; and the Commission's reasoning must demonstrate why the individual undertaking is legally responsible for the conduct attributed to it.
Competition Law and Administrative Court Proceedings in Cyprus
Papantoniou & Papantoniou LLC advises and represents businesses in Cyprus competition law matters, including competition investigations, responses to statements of objections, alleged restrictive agreements and anti-competitive practices, and recourses challenging decisions of administrative authorities before the Administrative Court.
The case was handled by Stefanos Savva, representing our firm.