On 7 November 2018, the European Commission approved the creation of six joint ventures by Daimler and BMW, which will be active in the field of mobility services, namely car sharing services (DriveNow and car2go), ride hailing services (Intelligent Apps GmbH incl. mytaxi), parking services (Parkmobile/ParkNow), charging services (ChargeNow) as well as other on-demand mobility services (ReachNow and moovel). The sixth joint venture will manage the brands and license them out to the other five joint ventures.

The Commission found that the activities of Daimler and BMW overlap significantly with respect to free-floating car sharing services in six cities (Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna), where the proposed concentration would limit the alternatives to car sharing, to the detriment of rival providers of integrator apps and rival car sharing providers.

To address the Commission’s concerns, Daimler and BMW offered, in the six relevant cities, two remedies, that grant: (i) application programming interface (‘API’) access to third party aggregator platforms for mobility solutions, so that they can also re-direct users to Daimler and BMW’s car sharing services; (ii) access to Daimler ‘moovel’ integrator app to interested car sharing providers.

According to the Commission, the proposed measures providers will reduce the barriers to entry for competing free-floating car sharing providers, allowing smaller competitors to enter the market in any of the cities concerned and be immediately visible on ‘moovel’. Moreover, the offered solutions will allow integrator apps to also display DriveNow and car2go to customers seeking a mobility solution.

Therefore, the Commission concluded that the proposed operation, as modified by the commitments, would no longer raise competition concerns. The Commission’s decision is conditional upon full compliance with the commitments.

Sara Capruzzi