EU Competition Commission (Referring to "Commission" hereinafter) initiated an investigation on Evergreen Line and other 14 carriers in May 17, 2011,
in regard to General Rate Increase (Referring to "GRI" hereinafter) announcement practice in liner shipping industry. Commission suspects that carriers are signaling their price information to each other for similar follow-up actions. After in-depth investigation for more than 2 years, Commission does not find any evidence to support suspicious price signaling accusation to the alleged carriers.
Evergreen Line welcomes the outcome and wants to reiterate that it is never Line's intention to issue GRI as the method to signal any price indication to other competitors, on the contrary, GRI is only issued for Line's customers as a price increase proposal for further negotiations upon requests Nevertheless, Evergreen has ceased from issuing GRI notice in 2014 upon receiving Commission's concerns in price signaling.
In exchange for Commission to close the case, carriers are willing to offer Commitment according to Article 9 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 and the Commitment will be adopted on Dec 7, 2016 for a period of 3 years. The scope of the Commitment covers the cargo to and from European Economic Area.