Price-fixing, quota agreements, division of markets, the general cartel
agreements, for years absorbed attention of economists and politicians
who have been trying to work out effective policies to deal with this type of
behavior. Despite these efforts, limiting the competition in the market through
the creation of illegal agreements is still a common phenomenon in today's
economy. To make sure that each participant of an illegal agreement will
be justly punished multistage EC has developed a mechanism for calculating
fines and systematically improves detection and level of penalties imposed to
deter companies from violations of competition law
