2024 ACM Annual Report: targeted interventions to ensure that markets work well

Summary

ACM publishes its 2024 Annual Report.
In 2024, ACM focused heavily on energy, the digital economy, and sustainability.
Together with the annual report, ACM also publishes a legislative letter.

Today, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) presents its 2024 annual report. Over the past year, ACM heavily focused on energy, the digital economy, and sustainability. For example, ACM reprimanded several online stores and other online service providers for misleading practices, revoked the license of an untrustworthy energy supplier, and took action against various companies because of misleading sustainability claims. In other areas, too, ACM committed itself to ensuring that markets work well for people and businesses. What is new this year: together with the annual report, ACM also publishes a legislative letter in which it recommends eliminating redundant rules.

Martijn Snoep, Chairman of the Board of ACM, says: “Our annual report clearly reveals that markets do not function well automatically. Rules and oversight are needed, so that people and businesses are able to reap the benefits from markets. Over the past year, we fully committed ourselves to the three major economic transitions in energy, the digital economy, and sustainability. The relevance of these transitions is now also influenced by the geopolitical tensions and the necessity of boosting European competitiveness. That is why we will fully commit ourselves to those topics next year too, next to our regular activities.”

Energy

In 2024, ACM presented a broad set of measures, aimed at helping system operators and businesses utilize network capacity better by stimulating flexible and a more efficient consumption of energy. For example, large-scale users that shift their consumption to off-peak hours get a discount on their tariffs of up to 65 percent. With a prioritization framework, ACM enables system operators to prioritize projects such as housing construction projects or the construction of hospitals. In 2025, ACM will hand down a new decision regarding this prioritization framework, so that it will continue to apply to projects with a social function. To protect households and other small-scale users, ACM last year also placed energy suppliers under heightened oversight, and revoked the license of Dutch energy supplier Hollandse Energie Maatschappij. In addition, ACM argued in favor of a ban on the sale of energy contracts over the phone, and is calling on businesses to step up their help to consumers with making choices that best meet their needs.

The digital economy

In digital markets, too, ACM took action several times in order to protect consumers, for example, against untrustworthy online stores, commercial debt counselors, and so-called dropshipping companies, which sell products online that they do not have in stock. Game developer Epic Games International was fined more than 1.1 million euros for using misleading countdown timers and ads in its game Fortnite. With these countdown timers and ads, children were pressured to make purchases. Other online providers, too, were reprimanded for misleading countdown timers, but also for fake reviews and fake discounts. Following ACM’s interventions, crowdfunding platforms will, going forward, state more clearly what amount of the donation they will keep. In addition, ACM in 2024 educated companies extensively about new European digital acts, such as the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, which ACM is now authorized to enforce.

Sustainability

With regard to sustainability, ACM took action against misleading sustainability claims of various companies, among other enforcement actions. In addition, ACM offers guidance to companies about how to work together in order to realize sustainability objectives while complying with the competition rules, for example, by carrying out informal assessments of initiatives and by launching the “collaboration check.”

Market studies and recommendations about redundant rules

In addition to its regulatory duties, ACM also conducts general market studies. In 2024, ACM conducted market studies into the savings market, the health insurance market, and into the effects of wholesale prices for electricity and natural gas on consumer energy prices, among other studies. In addition, ACM gives the Dutch legislature recommendations about new and existing rules. Together with the annual report, ACM for the first time ever publishes a legislative letter in which it recommends eliminating redundant rules. Moving forward, ACM will write such a letter every year, and, for future editions, will also involve businesses and other stakeholders in the process.

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