On 2 June 2025, the European Commission imposed fines totalling €329 million on two of the largest online food delivery companies in Europe, Delivery Hero of Germany, and Glovo of Spain, for participating in a cartel. This landmark decision marks the first time the Commission has found a cartel in the labour market and the first time it has sanctioned the anti-competitive use of a minority stake in a competing business.

The anti-competitive practices

Between July 2018 and July 2022, the two companies engaged in multiple anti-competitive practices and gradually ceased to compete covering the European Economic Area (EEA) that the Commission determined constituted a “single and continuous infringement”. The Commission’s investigation revealed three key violations:

• No-poach agreements: The companies agreed not to actively approach each other’s employees, beginning with limited reciprocal no-hire clauses in their shareholders’ agreement and later expanding to a general agreement. This covered all employees, but not the riders.

• Exchange of commercially sensitive information: The minority stake by Delivery Hero in Glovo allowed the management of the two companies to share highly sensitive commercial information (e.g. commercial strategies, prices and costs) – beyond what was required to monitor the financial investment. The exchange enabled them to align their market behaviour.

• Market allocation: The companies agreed to divide national markets for online food delivery in the EEA by removing geographic overlaps, avoiding entry into each other’s markets, and coordinating which company would enter new markets:

The investigation, which opened in July 2024, was prompted by information provided by a national authority and via the anonymous whistleblower tool, which led to the Commission carrying out unannounced inspections at the premises of the investigation targets. This swift conclusion was no doubt welcome result in itself, sending a clear message to competition authorities the world over that anti-trust cases do not have to take years to complete.

The Role of Minority Shareholding

The Commission highlighted how Delivery Hero’s minority stake in Glovo, acquired in July 2018 and progressively increased with subsequent investments until full acquisition in July 2022, facilitated the anti-competitive practices. The Commission found that, through its minority shareholding, Hero was able to obtain access to commercially sensitive information to influence the decision-making process and noted how, over the period, the two companies “progressively removed competitive constraints” and replaced competition with “multi-layered anti-competitive coordination”.

Phillippe Chauve, Head of Unit for Antirust in the Commission has taken the opportunity to comment on the decision that “consolidation should not happen behind closed doors in platform markets”. The remark is perhaps a thinly veiled nod to the “targeted transparency system” proposed in the Commission’s 2014 White Paper “Towards more effective EU merger control”, which would require undertakings to submit information to the Commission if a minority shareholding qualifies as a “competitively significant link”.  The threshold definition given in the White Paper – namely  the existence of “a prima facie competitive relationship between the acquirer’s and the target’s activities” – seems likely to be met in this case.

Article 14 of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) includes a similar zero threshold requirement to notify the Commission of “any intended concentration” that relates to where the merging entities or target of the concentration provide “any other services in the digital sector or enable the collection of data”. Perhaps Mr Chauve’s comments therefore provide a hint that the Commission may be seeking to invigorate its proposals in the White Paper for a minority shareholding acquisitions transparency system more generally, as part of its ongoing modernisation of EU competition law programme, bringing it closer in line with the DMA.

Financial Penalties

The Commission imposed fines of €223.2 million on Delivery Hero and €105.7 million on Glovo. Both companies admitted their involvement in the cartel, which resulted in waiving certain procedural rights and speeding up the case through an agreement to settle.  Both received a standard 10% reduction in fines under the Commission’s 2008 Settlement Notice and consideration for periods of “lesser cartel intensity”.

Compliance Lessons for Companies

This case provides several important compliance lessons for businesses:

• Careful handling of cross-ownership: The case demonstrates that the holding of minority stakes in competitors can raise significant antitrust risks and should be managed with extreme caution.

• Labour market compliance: Competition authorities are continuing to focus on labour markets and further enforcement action can be expected. Companies must not ignore the application of the competition rules in labour markets.

• Information exchange protocols: Businesses must establish strict protocols governing exchanges with competitors, as sharing commercially sensitive information can facilitate anticompetitive coordination and be sanctioned as an infringement.

• Whistleblower awareness: Companies should be aware that competition authorities have established anonymous whistleblower programmes that facilitate reporting of anticompetitive behaviour.

The Commission’s press release also seems to emphasise rights for private actions for damages, that would be available to victims of “anti-competitive behaviour described in this case” through actions in national courts, with the Commission’s decision ‘serving as “binding proof that the behaviour took place and was illegal”. Alongside the overt reminder the inference provides a more subtle reinforcement to the wider message of deterrence i.e., that the Commission’s penalty is unlikely to be the end of the financial impact on the company involved.

Key “takeaways”

The decision reflects the Commission’s growing focus on ensuring fair competition in digital markets and specifically in the rapidly evolving food delivery sector. It also signals increased attention to labour market competition, emphasising that employers must compete for talent and not collude to limit opportunities for workers.

The settlement decision is also an important reminder to companies operating in the digital economy and those considering the acquisition of – or with minority stakes in – competitors, to review their competition compliance programmes to ensure they are not inadvertently engaging in anti-competitive practices.