Examples of using Margin squeeze in English and their translations into Hungarian
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Programming
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Official/political
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Computer
Refusal to supply and margin squeeze.
As regards the margin squeeze, recitals 102 to 105 to the contested decision state.
(ii) The method used by the Commission to calculate the margin squeeze.
To show that there is a margin squeeze it is sufficient that there should be a disproportion between the two charges such that competition is restricted.
It must be notedthat the applicant puts forward three complaints concerning the method used to calculate the margin squeeze.
However, even if those productspecific costs were taken into account without the calculation error,there would still be a margin squeeze throughout the period of the infringement covered by the contested decision.
Ineffective price regulation in some Member States distorts the internal market and gives rise to distortions of competition,mainly through margin squeezes.
Fourthly, and lastly, the case-law relating to pricing and margin squeeze practices requires, as the appellant rightly points out, consideration of all the circumstances in order to determine whether the undertaking in question has abused its dominant position.
The applicant submits that it didnot have sufficient scope to avoid the margin squeeze alleged in the contested decision.
Any such costs which are generated solely as a result of technical or administrative measures associated with entry to amarket should be disregarded in the analysis of a margin squeeze.
The applicant claims that, contrary to the Commission's contention(recital 133 to the contested decision),there is no margin squeeze in the highest-value market sectors which are of interest to the applicant's competitors(ISDN connections and ADSL connections over analogue or ISDN lines).
Furthermore, in the same period, RegTP concluded in its decisions of 8 February 1999, 23 December 1999, 30 March 2001, 21 December 2001,11 April 2002 and 29 April 2003 that no margin squeeze existed to the detriment of competitors.
In addition, the applicant could not be unaware that that margin squeeze entailed serious restrictions on competition, particularly in view of its monopoly on the wholesale market and its virtual monopoly on the market in retail access services(recitals 97 to 100 to the contested decision).
In that respect, the Commission states in the contested decision that the applicant‘was in a position[during that period]to end the margin squeeze entirely by adjusting its retail charges'(recital 199).
In the second place,the applicant claims that the method used by the Commission to identify a margin squeeze is defective, because it relies on the proposition that it should be possible for the applicant's competitors to replicate its customer pattern entirely(recitals 120 to 127 to the contested decision).
However, as the positive spread was insufficient to cover the applicant's productspecific costs linked to the provision of retail services,there was a margin squeeze in 2002(recitals 154 and 160 to the contested decision).
For if, by exercising its discretion, the applicant had ended the margin squeeze as from 1998, it would have sufficed for the applicant to maintain the balance between its charges for wholesale access and its retail charges in order to avoid the margin squeeze identified in the contested decision throughout the period from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2001.
It follows that the applicant did not use the discretion available to it in order to secure an increase in its retail prices,which would have helped to reduce the margin squeeze in the period from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2001.
In those circumstances, the Commission was entitled to take the view in the contested decision(recital 111) that,in order to calculate the margin squeeze, the price of wholesale access had to be compared to the weighted average of retail prices for all access services, namely analogue narrowband access, digital narrowband access(ISDN) and broadband access in the form of ADSL services.
Finally, in the fourth place, it is necessary to consider whether the Commission has established to the requisite legal standard in the contested decision that the applicant had sufficient scope in the period from 1 January1998 to 31 December 2001 to‘[avoid] the margin squeeze'(recital 164).
It must be held that the Commission informed the applicant in the statement of objections(paragraphs 95 to 140) that it considered the applicant's pricing practices,and in particular the margin squeeze resulting from the negative or insufficient spread between its wholesale and retail prices, to be in breach of Article 82 EC.
That conclusion is not affected by the initiation of proceedings against the Member State for failure to fulfil obligations on account of the fact that those charges had been approved by the national regulatory authority for telecommunications where the dominant operator nevertheless hadscope to increase its retail prices and, therefore, to reduce the margin squeeze.
In recitals 206 and 207 to the contested decision, the Commission characterised the infringement as serious, not as very serious, in respect of the period from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2001 on the grounds, first,that the weighted method applied to determine the margin squeeze was new and had not previously been the subject of a formal decision and, second, that the applicant had steadily reduced the margin squeeze since 1999 at least.
In support of its argument, the applicant refers however to Paragraph 27(3) of the TKG, under which RegTP is to examine the conformity of the requested adjustment of charges‘with… other legal provisions'(said by the applicant to include Article 82 EC) and to the various decisions ofRegTP mentioned in paragraph 78 above in which the existence of a margin squeeze was investigated.
Nor is such a decision contrary to the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations, even though,after considering whether a margin squeeze existed and finding the negative or insufficient spread between the wholesale and retail prices, the national regulatory authority for telecommunications took the view that other operators should be able to offer their endusers competitive prices by resorting to cross-subsidisation of access services and call services.
While it is not inconceivable that the German authorities also infringed Community law- particularly the provisions of Directive 90/388, as amended by Directive 96/19- by opting for a gradual rebalancing of connection and call charges, such a failure to act, if it were to be established,would not remove the scope which the applicant had to reduce the margin squeeze.
Although the Commission found that‘[t]he fixed-network connections are in reality a prerequisite for the provision of a variety of telecommunications services to end-users', and that those services enable considerable additional revenue to be generated(recital 205 to the contested decision), it nevertheless contradicted itself in refusing to take thecharges for those telecommunications services into account in its analysis of the margin squeeze.
Such restrictive exclusionary market practices may take several forms,such as certain pricing methods(predatory pricing, margin squeezing), refusal to deal, tying agreements(to sell goods that do not necessarily belong together) obstructing market entry or excluding a competitor from the market.
Most often, it refers to price discrimination practices which are designed to attract customers of competing operators, such as predatory pricing,differential rates of discount and margin squeezing.