OREANDA-NEWS. May 17, 2013. The antimonopoly case was initiated upon an order of the Ministry of Transport that approved the requirements to tachographs installed in certain categories of vehicles (trucks over 3.5 tons and commercial passenger cars with more than 8 seats).

According to the approved requirements, from 1st April 2013 certain categories of vehicles must be equipped with tachographs that have cryptographic means of information protection certified by the Federal Security Service.

Therefore, the Ministry of Transport specified constructive requirements to production of tachographs rather than their functionalities.

In the FAS opinion, the requirements to tachographs approved by the Ministry of Transport can restrict the circle of its producers and exclude possibility of equipping vehicles with tachographs produced before 1st April 2013, regardless of their functionalities. Moreover, possibilities of market participants for production of tachographs will depend directly on access to the cryptographic means of information protection that today only one company – the market monopolist has a possibility to produce.

Fixing such requirements can result in significant increase of functioning costs for both producers and consumers of tachographs.

Actions of the Ministry of Transport have signs of violating Clauses 2 and 8 Part 1 Article 15 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” in the part of unreasonably preventing activities of economic entities, particularly by fixing the requirements to the goods that are not provided for by the laws of the Russian Federation уand creating discriminatory conditions n the markets of tachographs and cryptographic means of information protection for tachographs in the Russian Federation.

"A consequence of the order can be the necessity to re-equip all trucks in the Russian Federation with devices that cannot be produced without the monopolist, which would cause additional costs on the market", pointed out the Head of FAS Igor Artemiev.