The German Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) has found Deutsche Bahn (DB) to be abusing its dominant position in the railway transport and infrastructure markets in Germany, by restricting competition coming from third-party mobility platforms. Mobility platforms provides integrated route planning for travellers and heavily rely on DB offerings and transport data for providing its services. Bundeskartellamt found DB abusing its dominant position by providing discriminatory treatment to these third-party mobility platforms especially by imposing “data sharing limitations, advertising restrictions, vertical pricing constraints, stringent discount prohibitions, and the withholding of commissions crucial for the sustenance of third-party platforms”.
