(The word year was added to the last sentence of the first paragraph)

BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The EU Commission has officially opened proceedings against the food delivery service Delivery Hero on suspicion of a cartel infringement. Specifically, the authority assumes that the company may have engaged in anti-competitive exchanges with another company, for example on prices and strategies. The company in question is Glovo, headquartered in Spain. Glovo also earns its money in the delivery service sector. Meanwhile, Delivery Hero emphasized that it is sticking to its targets for 2024 and intends to increase profitability from next year.

The Commission had already carried out unannounced inspections at Delivery Hero in Berlin and Barcelona in November. Delivery Hero announced at the time that it was cooperating "fully" with the authorities. The company is based in Berlin. However, Delivery Hero does not operate its own delivery service in Germany.

"Delivery Hero and Glovo are among the largest food delivery services in Europe", the Commission stated. From July 2018, Delivery Hero held a minority stake in Glovo and took sole control of the company in July 2022. The Brussels authority currently assumes that collusion could have taken place before this takeover.

Penalty of more than 400 million possible

Just over two weeks ago, Delivery Hero announced that a fine of potentially more than 400 million euros could be imposed for potential violations of EU antitrust law. Until then, the Berlin-based company had only set aside 186 million euros for the dispute. Accordingly, the company announced a significant increase in the corresponding provision.

In addition to agreements on sensitive information such as prices, the EU Commission suspects that Delivery Hero and Glovo may have agreed not to poach employees from each other. There are also allegations that the two companies were able to divide up markets between them locally. The Commission emphasizes that it has not yet come to a final conclusion as to whether the two companies have broken EU rules./mjm/DP/ngu