Discounting war may be ending
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THE price war, which has led to discounts of up to 40 per cent on the list price of commercial vehicles, may soon be a thing of the past. According to the EEC Commission, the death will be of natural causes.
The Commission statement follows a question from a German Euro-MP concerned that the price war was damaging the market for middle and heavy range vehicles.
Not only was there excess European production, the Community was also under "strong pressure" from commercial vehicles produced in non-EEC countries.
Mr Ernst Muller-Hermann believed state intervention would create more problems than it solved. It would lead to an everincreasing need for ever-higher levels of public support. Instead he would like to see intervention on a Community level.
The Commission's industrial spokesman, Etienne Davignon, said that while the authorities were aware of the substantial discounts being offered, they believed the problem could be caused simply by unrealistically low list prices which no longer bore any relation to the genuine price under competitive conditions.
Where the prices were a result of 'unfair practices', these could best be dealt with under national trading laws.
However, he added that he believed the problem would sort itself out as Community demand stabilised. Slow growth is expected in the medium term — fed not only by the general trend, but also by replacement decisions postponed in recent years, he said.