Riga, September 25, 2025 – Latvia’s Competition Council (Konkurences padome) has stepped in to address potentially abusive practices in the municipal waste management sector, requiring operators to overhaul their fee-setting practices and warning the industry against anticompetitive conduct.
The regulator’s investigation revealed that a major household waste management operator had imposed uniform charges on all Producer Responsibility System Operators (RASO) for access to separate collection site infrastructure, regardless of the number of waste management systems each operator was involved in. By forcing RASO to sign contracts on identical terms, the operator leveraged its dominant position in municipal service areas, effectively limiting fair competition.
Following the authority’s intervention, the operator amended its pricing methodology. Fees are now differentiated according to the scope of each RASO’s operations, and only economically justified costs linked directly to the specific service may be included. These changes, implemented swiftly after the regulator’s findings, eliminated what the authority viewed as a prima facie competition law violation.
The KP underlined that municipal waste management companies typically operate in a dominant position within their contracted territories, as they are indispensable partners for RASO in fulfilling legal obligations to collect packaging, hazardous goods, electrical equipment, and textiles. This dominant status, the Council stressed, carries heightened responsibility: pricing methodologies must be transparent, cost-based, and tailored to each operator’s actual obligations.
While holding a dominant position is not unlawful, abusing it is prohibited under Latvia’s Competition Law. The KP reminded operators that abuse can lead to fines of up to 5% of annual net turnover.
