Translation of "Sale below cost" in German

Almost all MEPs who took the floor this morning and this evening have mentioned sale below cost.

In discussing national provisions banning sale below cost, Mr Beysen, Mr Langen, Mrs Fourtou, Mrs McCarthy, Mr MacCormick and many others expressed concern at how SMEs would be affected if these national provisions were to be abolished.

I should also like to emphasise that the Commission does not agree that such prohibitions on sale below cost are needed to maintain clearance sales.

The issue of sale below cost is being temporarily deferred because the positions in the different Member States vary too widely.

The reason for tabling such an amendment is that I do not want the liberalisation of sale below cost to have a detrimental effect on small and medium-size enterprises.

Accordingly, a transparency condition obliging resellers, subject to such contractual terms, to inform their suppliers that they are to undertake a sale below cost would be more effective than a ban to ensure fair trade between the relevant market players.

In the view of the Committee, the requirement to give an ‘indication of a sale below cost’ should be deleted.

With regard to the European Union, on the other hand, the agreement, which is in its completion phase, foresees access to the market of industrial and agricultural products, commercial services, intellectual properties, rules of origin (aimed at fighting dumping, or rather, export and sale below cost, and increasing denomination of origin), state provisioning, and legal, institutional and investment solutions.

It has been the BDM's (German Dairy Farmers' Association) criticism since 2007 that this regulation would fall short, because the ban on the sale of food below cost price operates only on the level between processing and retailers.

The provision requires that sales below cost must be allowed.

This article is without prejudice to national provisions governing sales or resales below cost.

The EESC has serious reservations regarding the effectiveness of consumer information arrangements for sales below cost.

From this perspective, we dismissed sales liberalisation and below cost resale, by asking the European Commission to carry out a more detailed study on this specific subject.

I should like to hear the Commissioner's opinion on the amendment in which we want to maintain the national provisions banning sales below cost, or in any case giving the Member States the opportunity to do so.

However, no fine intention to improve the functioning of the internal market and to make best use of competition rules - as the Commission would like to see, and rightly so - can hide the irrationality of allowing sales below cost.

I wonder whether the Commissioner comprehends that sales below cost are an instrument that can not only be abused by a dominant player to vanquish its rivals within competition law, but that it also enables an integrated distribution company to exploit its stronger financial position vis-à-vis specialised SMEs that have less financial clout.

The deletion of the rule prohibiting sales below cost price, as demanded by the Economic Committee and taken up by the Legal Affairs Committee, is right and proper.

The Commission proposed transparency obligations as a precondition for the planned prohibition of sales below cost price, and these bear no relation to current practice, are questionable from the point of view of competition law and would lead to agreements to fix the resale price.

It is, however, important that the Commission addresses some of the concerns of Members of the European Parliament and of my political group on the issue of sales below cost in particular.

That is why, in the spirit of better legislation called for by Commissioner Prodi recently, my group will give the Commission conditional support for the regulation if it agrees to carry out an evaluation study to examine exactly how sales below cost can benefit both small businesses and consumers.

With regard to the first point, where the volume of domestic sales below unit cost represents more than 20 % of sales, normal value is based on the profitable sales only, in accordance with the third subparagraph of Article 2 (4) of the basic Regulation.

It was found that the weighted average selling price of all domestic sales during the investigation period was above the weighted average unit cost of production, and that the volume of individual sales transactions below unit cost of production was less than 20 % of the sales being used to determine normal value; therefore all domestic sales were regarded as having been made in the ordinary course of trade.

The extended period of time shall normally be one year but shall in no case be less than six months, and sales below unit cost shall be considered to be made in substantial quantities within such a period when it is established that the weighted average selling price is below the weighted average unit cost, or that the volume of sales below unit cost is not less than 20 % of sales being used to determine normal value.

In this context sales below cost of a particular product type can only be taken into account for the determination of the profit margin if the volume of non-profitable sales of such type is not higher than 20 % of all sales of the type in question.

In this context, sales below cost of a particular product type can only be taken into account for the determination of the profit margin if the volume of non-profitable sales of such type is not higher than 20 % of all sales of this type in question or if the weighted average selling price is not below the weighted average unit cost.

Similarly, restrictions of sales-below costs have tended to set a price floor which limits price competition and increases stock-management costs, even if such regulations were primarily designed to deter predatory behaviour to the detriment of smaller market operators.

The ESC recommends that the possibility of sales below cost be entirely removed from the draft regulation, and that no other opportunity for such sales exist.

The rapporteur, Mr Dimitriadis, pointed out that, by eliminating competition – usually from SMEs – sales below cost could lead to the creation of monopolies.