The Competition Council is accusing the companies issuing meal tickets of unfair competition practices. The companies in question argue the legislation in this field is not clear and distorts the free competition. The meal ticket market is one of the most dynamic and profitable in the economy and is estimated at 450 million euros a year.
The companies that grant meal tickets have the entire spending thereof deducted.
The Competition Council, the institution that sees to the observance of the competition law, says the issuer companies’ imposing a fee of at least 2% of the value of the meal tickets ordered by employers is not fair competition and goes against the European practice.
The meal ticket issuers say they were actually trying to prevent certain dumping cases.
The representatives of these companies say the market is actually distorted by the meal ticket legislation in the first place, which is completely different than that in any other country of the world.
Therefore, unlike any other country, Romania’s meal ticket law allows the State to decide how much of the total volume of meal tickets should be issued by each company. For instance, Accor Ticket Service, one of the main players on the market has a 35% share and Sodexho Pass has a 30% share of the maximum number of people employed by private companies that may benefit from meal tickets.
This is also set on an annual basis by the state budget law and this year’s cap is set at about 1.626 million people.
“If one company does not use up the market share set by the authorities in a six-month period, the market share is lowered for the next six months. To use up their market share, some meal ticket issuers have greatly cut their fees charged of employers, pushing them down close to zero and have raised the fees charged of the affiliated stores,” said Miclos Karoly, head of Sfantu Gheorghe-based Hungastro, a meal ticket issuer company. Karoly did not reveal the names of the companies he was talking about.
He says the companies on the market have tried to set this minimal 2% fee precisely because they wanted to contain the dumping practices.
The fee paid by employers to issuer companies normally ranges between 1% and 10% and has to cover the meal ticket printing costs. “The law stipulates it is the employer that has to bear the meal ticket printing costs and not the affiliated stores,” Karoly says.
Satya Christoph Menard, general manager of Sodexho Pass says the meal ticket legislation needs clarifications and improvements.
“It is about Article 24 in Law 142/1998, which specifies the employer shall reimburse the issuer company for the ticket and its printing costs. The talks with the Finance Ministry over this issue will go on,” he says.
georgiana.stavarache@zf.ro