The recent investigation launched by the Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) into an alleged cartel among producers of automated packaging machines is a timely illustration of an emerging trend in competition law enforcement. By placing labour market restrictions at the centre of its analysis, the AGCM joins a broader movement – both at EU and national level, but also beyond – that focuses on collusion among employers as a direct infringement of competition rules. Beyond public enforcement, such practices also foster closer attention to the potential use of private remedies as a means for affected workers to obtain compensation for the harm caused by collusion at the employer level.
Labour market cartels as an emerging enforcement priority
As announced in its Decision published on 26 January 2026, the AGCM investigation concerns a no-poach agreement allegedly put in place by undertakings active in the automated packaging machines sector, designed to restrict the recruitment of specialised technical workers known as “validators” (see AGCM investigation, para. 8). The investigation identifies major industry players such as IMA and Coesia as key participants in a scheme that primarily concerns companies located in a specific area commonly referred to as “Packaging Valley”. According to the AGCM, the alleged collusive agreement may have restricted competition in the labour market by limiting employees’ mobility, artificially lowering wages and hindering professional growth opportunities of highly skilled workers (see AGCM investigation, para. 12). The AGCM is investigating whether this constitutes a violation of European and national competition laws.
The AGCM initiative is noteworthy particularly for the market it places at the centre of the analysis: the labour market. While cartel enforcement has traditionally focused on product and service markets, competition authorities are increasingly scrutinising agreements between undertakings that restrict competition for workers. At EU level, this shift is reflected in recent policy initiatives and enforcement tools, including the European Commission (EC)’s 2023 Horizontal Guidelines, which explicitly acknowledge the anticompetitive risks of collusion in labour markets (para. 279(a)); an EC Competition Policy Brief from 2024 (see EC brief); and the first no-poach infringement decision adopted in 2025 against Delivery Hero & Glovo (Case AT.40795 – Food Delivery Services). In the latter, the EC found that, following Delivery Hero’s acquisition of a minority shareholding in Glovo, the parties engaged in a series of anticompetitive practices that reduced competitive constraints between them for almost four years. Among other things, the shareholders’ agreement signed by Delivery Hero included a limited reciprocal no-hire clause for certain employees, which was subsequently expanded into a broader agreement not to actively approach each other’s workforce.
While the EC has shown an increasing willingness to play an active role and coordinate enforcement within the framework of the European Competition Network (see EC brief), labour markets are predominantly local or regional in nature. Enforcement in this area is therefore likely to fall primarily to national competition authorities. Indeed, a growing focus on labour market collusion can already be observed across Member States – in the form of updated guidelines, new enforcement agendas, investigations in susceptible sectors such as media, sport, high-tech and consulting, and decisions sanctioning wage-fixing and no-poach agreements between competing undertakings.[1]
Beyond Europe, similar developments can be observed in the United States, where current antitrust guidelines specifically extend enforcement priorities to the protection of employees and competition in the labour market. US antitrust agencies have also initiated several criminal no‑poach and wage‑fixing cases (see GCR Americas Antitrust Review).
Why labour market collusion causes harm: economic logic
Anticompetitive agreements among employers in the labour markets may take the form of wage-fixing or no-poach arrangements. Under the former, employers agree to fix wages and/or other types of compensation or benefits. The latter involves commitments between competing firms either (i) not to actively or passively hire each other’s employees (no-hire); or (ii) not to actively contact each other’s workers (non-solicit or no-cold-calling) (see AGCM investigation, para. 19).
The increasing focus of competition authorities on these agreements might reflect a growing recognition of their potentially harmful effects, with main consequences for workers whose position is weakened in several ways, as extensively outlined in the AGCM’s investigation-opening decision. First, by limiting alternative job opportunities for professionals, wage-fixing and no-poach agreements enhance employers’ bargaining power, allowing them to impose lower salaries than would prevail in a competitive environment. In the absence of credible opportunities to switch, workers’ ability to leverage competing offers is substantially weakened, even where their skills are scarce and/or highly requested. Second, by suppressing inter-employer competition, such agreements undermine workers’ prospects to improve their economic position and to advance in their career, frustrating their professional expectations. In this setting, personal incentives to invest in training and skills developments are seriously diminished, ultimately reinforcing the power-imbalance that facilitate collusion in the first place.
Beyond their direct impact on workers, illicit agreements among employers more broadly affect competition in the labour market. By impairing the efficient allocation of workforce, wage-fixing and no-poach agreements reduce innovation in the affected sector, provided that professional knowledge is most often channelled through employee mobility across firms. Moreover, these practices can generate wider negative spillover effects in the form of productivity losses, which may translate into a reduction of output, lower quality, and/or increasing prices for final customers. Ultimately, it has been observed that, by inflating recruitment costs and constraining companies’ ability to hire experienced professionals, no-poach agreements may also operate as entry barriers preventing new competitors’ access in the downstream product market (see EC brief, p.5).
Interestingly, latest US guidelines also cover instances of information sharing on employment terms, potentially facilitated by algorithmic or data-driven tools, in the form of recommendations on salary-levels or bonuses. These practices, too, may warrant scrutiny as forms of indirect coordination capable of producing similar anti-competitive effects as actual agreements (see GCR Americas Antitrust Review).
Legal framework under Article 101 TFEU: enforcement and private actions for damages
From a legal perspective, illicit labour market agreements among employers may qualify as restrictions of competition by object under Article 101(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Wage-fixing may be characterised as a conduct that “fix[es] purchase […] price” (Article 101(1)(a) TFEU), while no-poach agreements may amount to “shar[ing] sources of supply” (Article 101(1)(c) TFEU).
Cartel behaviour is normally associated with practices such as price-fixing, bid rigging, or market sharing in goods and services markets. Labour markets flip that initial intuition displaying characteristics akin to buyer cartels. Employers purchase labour services and often enjoy structural bargaining advantages over the suppliers of those services, the employees, especially in specialised professions where demand is highly concentrated and geographically clustered (on the competitive equilibrium in labour market see Oxera).
These features create favourable incentives for employers’ coordination and facilitate its implementation. By exploiting information asymmetry and repeated informal opportunities for interactions, employers may collude to the detriment of employees whose job-searching and switching opportunities are constrained and whose ability to negotiate wages is drastically weakened. The AGCM investigation provides a representative example of this dynamic. The profession of “validators” is characterised by a high degree of specialisation and by the fact that prior experience constitutes a key selection criterion. Restrictions on inter-firm mobility directly undermine workers’ ability to accumulate experience and to leverage it in negotiations with prospective employers.
In principle, the pro-competitive effects of an agreement may be considered, provided that they are demonstrated, relevant, specifically related to that agreement and sufficiently significant. However, in the context of labour market agreements, the scope for net efficiencies is highly uncertain (see EC brief, p.5). In addition, less restrictive alternatives are generally available to pursue legitimate corporate objectives, such as the inclusion of bilateral non-compete clauses in contracts between the company and employees, to the extent that these are limited in duration and scope, and their content strictly limited to what is necessary to protect legitimate interests (including the safeguarding of company-specific know-how or the recovery of investments in employee training) (see EC brief, p.7). Against this background, it is unlikely that broad horizontal wage-fixing or no-poach arrangements between competing employers could objectively be justified under Article 101(3) TFEU. Additionally, it has been observed that circumstances where such practices could meet the necessary criteria to be identified as ancillary restraints would be interpreted in a very strict manner (see EC brief p. 6).
Altogether, this framework confirms that wage-fixing and no-poach agreements are treated, in legal terms, as hardcore restrictions comparable to traditional cartel conduct, paving the way for both increased public enforcement and follow-on private damages actions.
Damage claims due to labour market agreements
Private enforcement has the potential to play a particularly important complementary role to the activity of public agencies. Just as is the case for the implementation of the EU competition rules by public enforcement, actions for damages for infringement of Article 101 TFEU are an integral part of the system for enforcement of those rules (see European Court of Justice, Sumal, para. 37). Workers, the harmed parties, are typically at a significant informational disadvantage with respect to their employers. Moreover, the dependency inherent in the employment relationship and fear of retaliation may discourage them from questioning employment conditions or asserting their rights individually. Private enforcement, particularly in the form of bundled actions, may help overcoming rational apathy and coordination failures by increasing awareness of anticompetitive conduct and reinforcing incentives to seek compensation for harm which is in this case dispersed across many victims. In addition, as no-poach and wage-fixing agreements more often target a clearly identifiable group of workers defined by profession, role and/or qualification, identification of potential victims appears practicable. Furthermore, employment contracts and remuneration structures are mostly standardised, providing an objective basis for damage estimation. Plausible wage benchmarks may be constructed using regional or sectoral comparators, particularly where the relevant labour market is highly concentrated.
Collectively, these features suggest that private enforcement in labour cartel cases is not only desirable from an enforcement perspective, but also practically feasible.
Outlook
In the labour market, employers compete as buyers for the provision of labour services, seeking to attract the most qualified workers under the most favourable conditions. This competitive process is fundamental to ensure an efficient allocation of labour, minimise unemployment, and maximise productivity and incentives for innovation. In recent years, competition authorities’ attention to labour market infringements is intensifying, as reflected in the growing number of investigations opened and guidelines published on the matter. In this evolving landscape, private enforcement has the potential to represent a natural and powerful complement to public action. By enabling harmed workers to obtain compensation and by reinforcing deterrence, private enforcement may contribute to safeguard well-functioning labour markets, where employers compete for talent and workers are rewarded for the value of the service they provide.
By Giulia Rurali and Carsten Krüger
References:
Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM), Opening of Investigation, Case I881 – IMA/GD/Akkodis/IEMA/SIA/SPAIQ, 22 December 2025. Available at: https://en.agcm.it/dotcmsdoc/pressrelease/I881_provv.%20avvio.pdf
D. Bansal, B. Mejia, J. Brinton and L. Hirsch, GCR Americas Antitrust Review: The ‘no-poach’ approach: latest trends in antitrust enforcement of labour markets, 11 August 2025. Available at: https://globalcompetitionreview.com/review/the-antitrust-review-of-the-americas/2026/article/the-no-poach-approach-latest-trends-in-antitrust-enforcement-of-labour-markets
European Commission, Competition policy brief, Antitrust in Labour Markets, Issue 2, May 2024. Available at : https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/document/download/adb27d8b-3dd8-4202-958d-198cf0740ce3_en
European Commission, Press Release, Commission fines Delivery Hero and Glovo €329 million for participation in online food delivery cartel, 2 June 2025. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_1356
L. Damastra (senior consultant at Oxera), How do non-poaching agreements distort competition?, 28 June 2019. Available at: https://www.oxera.com/insights/agenda/articles/how-do-non-poaching-agreements-distort-competition
[1] See for instance, but not exclusively:
- Belgian Competition Authority (BCA), Case Nr. 27/2024 decision sanctioning Securitas, G4S and Seris for various malpractices in the private security sector including “no-poach” or “non-solicitation”, 3 July 2024 (20240703_Persbericht_27_BMA.pdf)
- Portuguese Competition Authority (AdC), Press Release, “AdC fines Inetum Group for anti-competitive practices in the labour market,” 19 February 2025 (AdC fines Inetum Group for anti-competitive practices in the labour market | Autoridade da Concorrência)
- CMA infringement decision, Case 51156 sanctioning four companies, including the BBC and ITV, for anticompetitive exchanges of information about the rates paid to freelancers working in the production and broadcasting of sports content in the UK (Non-confidential decision)
- Lithuanian competition authority, Case C 324/25 decision on wage-fixing for basketball players, which is now pending a request for a preliminary ruling at the ECJ (see ici)
