The unilegion Farmers’ Alliance for Plant Protection (Bauernbündnis Pflanzenschutz) has filed a claim against German wholesalers of plant protection products with the Cartel Chamber of the Dortmund Regional Court and is demanding compensation for damages totalling over €200 million. The background to the legal dispute is a price cartel organised by German wholesalers which has been operating for many years. A Taylor Wessing team led by Hamburg partner and antitrust law expert Dr Stefan Horn has been advising on the initiative, which represents the claims of around 3,200 agricultural businesses and is one of the largest cartel damages cases in Germany.
After years of investigations, the German Federal Cartel Office imposed fines totalling €157 million on eight wholesalers of crop protection products, including AGRAVIS and BayWa, back in 2020. According to the Federal Cartel Office’s findings, the wholesalers had illegally agreed prices for crop protection products between 1998 and 2015. The overall damage caused to German farmers by the artificially high prices runs into the billions - part of which is now to be legally reimbursed to the farmers by the Farmers’ Alliance set up by unilegion from Munich. The action for damages was filed at the end of December 2024 and served by the Dortmund Regional Court at the end of January 2025 (case reference: 8 O 26/24).
The Farmers’ Alliance brings together almost 3,200 German farms with around 850,000 hectares of land and over one billion euros in pesticide purchases, and the farms have assigned their claims to unilegion for combined enforcement. In terms of the amount of damages and the number of injured parties, the proceedings initiated by unilegion are one of the largest class actions in Germany to date. To participate in the class action, farmers had to provide evidence of their purchases of crop protection products during the cartel period in the form of corresponding purchase invoices. unilegion received over 600,000 such invoices and analysed all the purchase items recorded. In total, the farmers represented in the class action spent over one billion euros on crop protection products affected by the cartel in the relevant years. “Our members paid too high a price for each of these purchases, while as farmers they were exposed to high economic pressure overall. It's time for them to get this money back,” explains Katharina Fröhlich, Managing Director of unilegion Pflanzenschutz GmbH, the organisation behind the initiative. An evaluation of the purchasing data collected by the competition economics consultancy RIWACON Economics, which specialises in quantifying cartel damages, has revealed that the farmers participating in the class action have suffered damages totalling over 200 million euros including interest. “The calculation of cartel damages requires the careful application of complex statistical methods and a comprehensive understanding of market conditions. It was a considerable advantage that we had an enormous amount of purchasing data from the farmers at our disposal for our analyses,” emphasises Fabian Rinnen from RIWACON.
The Farmers’ Alliance is being represented by Taylor Wessing in the proceedings before the Dortmund Regional Court. The law firm has put together a team of experienced lawyers specialising in antitrust law and litigation for the proceedings. “The Federal Cartel Office's decision to impose a fine makes it clear that there was an illegal price cartel. The members of the cartel would have to defend themselves in the proceedings by claiming that their cartel did not lead to excessive prices. However, the question then arises as to why they should have operated an allegedly ineffective price cartel for more than 17 years at great expense and by accepting a considerable risk of fines. They will not be able to provide such an explanation,” says Dr Stefan Horn, antitrust law expert at Taylor Wessing.
Legal advisers to unilegion Farmers’ Alliance for Plant Protection
Taylor Wessing Germany: Dr Stefan Horn (Salary Partner), Dr Marco Hartmann-Rüppel (Partner), Lena Rindsfus (Associate), all Competition, EU & Trade, Donata von Enzberg (Partner), Disputes & Investigations, all Hamburg
