Major car manufacturers and two trade bodies are to pay a total of £461m for "colluding to restrict competition" over vehicle recycling, UK and European regulators have announced.
Major car manufacturers and two trade bodies are to pay a total of £461m for "colluding to restrict competition" over vehicle recycling, UK and European regulators have announced.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said they illegally agreed not to compete against one another when advertising what percentage of their cars can be recycled.
They also colluded to avoid paying third parties to recycle their customers' scrap cars, the watchdog said.
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It explained that those involved were BMW, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot Citroen, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, Vauxhall and Volkswagen.
Mercedes-Benz, was also party to the agreements, the CMA said, but it escaped a financial penalty because the German company alerted it to its participation.
The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (Acea) and the Society of Motor Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT) were also involved in the illegal agreements.
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The CMA imposed a combined penalty of almost £78m while the European Commission handed out fines totalling €458m (£382.7m).
The penalties were announced at a time of wider turmoil for Europe's car industry.
Manufacturers across the continent are bracing for the threatened impact of tariffs on all their exports to the United States as part of Donald Trump's trade war.
Within the combined fine settlements of £77.7m issued by the CMA, Ford was to pay £18.5m, VW £14.8m, BMW £11.1m and Jaguar Land Rover £4.6m.
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Lucilia Falsarella Pereira, senior director of competition enforcement at the CMA, said: "Agreeing with competitors the prices you'll pay for a service or colluding to restrict competition is illegal and this can extend to how you advertise your products.
"This kind of collusion can limit consumers' ability to make informed choices and lower the incentive for companies to invest in new initiatives.
"We recognise that competing businesses may want to work together to help the environment, in those cases our door is open to help them do so."
