Manufacturers care about the price their products sell for at retail: it shapes brand positioning, partner relationships and margins across the whole chain. But in the European Union, competition law draws a strict line between recommending a price and imposing one, and fines for crossing it run into millions of euros. Here is what the rules say. This is an overview, not legal advice: decisions on your pricing policy should be agreed with a competition lawyer.
What EU law says
Agreements between suppliers and resellers fall under Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits agreements that restrict competition. Vertical agreements — between manufacturer, distributor and retailer — are governed by Regulation (EU) 2022/720 on vertical agreements (VBER), applicable since 1 June 2022, and by the European Commission's Guidelines on vertical restraints.
The Regulation classifies resale price maintenance (RPM) — setting a fixed or minimum price at which the reseller must sell the product — as a "hardcore restriction". Such a clause takes the agreement outside the exemption regardless of the parties' market shares.
At the same time, the same Regulation expressly leaves suppliers two options: recommending a resale price and setting a maximum price — provided that, through pressure or incentives, they do not turn into a fixed or minimum price.
What is allowed
- Publishing a recommended retail price (RRP) — in price lists, on packaging, on your own website.
- Setting a maximum resale price.
- Monitoring the prices at which your products sell in shops and on marketplaces, and using that data in your own pricing, assortment and promotional policy.
- Enforcing conditions unrelated to the resale price: accurate product descriptions, correct use of your trademark, the rules of an agreed selective distribution system.
What is not allowed
The Commission's Guidelines list ways in which a minimum price is imposed indirectly, without being written into the contract. Each of them is treated as resale price maintenance all the same:
- requiring the reseller not to price below the RRP — in writing, verbally or in "informal" correspondence;
- fixing the reseller's margin or the maximum discount off the RRP;
- making bonuses or reimbursement of promotional costs conditional on keeping to a price level;
- linking the resale price to competitors' prices;
- threatening, warning, penalising, delaying or suspending deliveries, or terminating the contract over pricing.
Internally, companies often call this "RRP control", but what matters is not the name of the process — it is what happens once a low price has been found.
Price monitoring: the tool is legal, the risk lies in how it is used
Price monitoring as such is not prohibited: a brand is entitled to watch the market, compare resellers' prices with the RRP and analyse deviations. The Commission's Guidelines note, however, that measures to impose a price become more effective when combined with a monitoring system that identifies resellers who cut prices. The risk comes not from collecting the data but from the pressure built on it.
A telling example is the European Commission's decisions of July 2018: Asus, Denon & Marantz, Philips and Pioneer were fined a total of more than €111 million for restricting online retailers' ability to set their own prices. According to the case files, the manufacturers tracked prices, including with monitoring software, and intervened when retailers lowered them. National competition authorities — the Bundeskartellamt in Germany, UOKiK in Poland, the CNMC in Spain and others — apply the same rules and regularly impose fines for resale price maintenance.
How to work with an RRP safely
- Call the price recommended and act accordingly. Contracts, price lists and correspondence with partners should contain no requirement to hold the price.
- Use monitoring data for your own decisions. Market prices are there to help you plan promotions, adjust the RRP and evaluate channels and assortment — not to write to resellers demanding that they raise their prices.
- Find out where low prices come from. A stock clearance, parallel imports from another EU country, an unauthorised seller on a marketplace or a counterfeit are different situations with different lawful responses, and most of them are not about the price as such.
- Check the maximum price if you set one. Here monitoring shows directly whether the condition is being met.
- Agree the process with a lawyer. The rules are common across the EU, but the practice of national authorities and courts varies.
What monitoring delivers in practice
To make decisions based on facts, you need an accurate picture of the market: who sells your products, at what price, whether they are in stock and how the price changes over time. Helecos collects this data on a schedule and compares resellers' prices with your RRP. For every deviation it stores the seller, URL, price, currency, check time and a screenshot of the page. What you do with this data is your decision — bearing in mind the rules above. Learn more on the RRP monitoring page.