Translation of "vente à prix imposé " (French → English) :

In most Member States, fees for professional services are negotiated freely between practitioners and clients. However, in a small number of cases the Commission has observed the existence of fixed prices (e.g. in Germany for tax consultants), minimum prices (e.g. in Italy and Germany for architects) and maximum prices (e.g. in Italy for lawyers).

The Commission welcomed the amendments and intended to issue a formal clearance for the new, purely national "Sammelrevers" system of fixed book prices in Germany (see IP/00/651 of 22 June 2000), in particular following the clarification that direct cross-border sales of books to final consumers in Member States other than the Member State in which the seller is established were not subject to the price fixing agreements and that this also applied therefore to direct cross-border sales to final consumers via the Internet and direct cross-border sales to final consumers in Germany.

This means that the fixed prices do not apply to direct cross-border sales of books via the Internet, including direct cross-border sales of German books from another Member State to German final consumers.

On the one hand, the Commission preliminarily finds that, contrary to the above-mentioned understanding, direct cross-border sales of books to final consumers via the Internet at a price other than the fixed price for Germany have been systematically regarded as a circumvention of the system.

On the other hand, the Commission preliminarily finds that the refusals by certain German publishers and book-wholesalers to supply Internet booksellers established outside of Germany to prevent direct cross-border sales of books to consumers at a price other than the fixed price for Germany were based on illegal collusion and therefore also infringe the competition rules.

It covers tendering procedures, export refunds and sales at reduced prices of intervention products, financed by the Guarantee Section of the EAGGF.