The EU authority suspects an illegal cartel agreement.

The inspectors have examined electronic devices looking for evidence of possible collusion among the companies on market sharing or artificially pricing their products or services.

The present investigation is independent of the investigation by EU anti-corruption authority OLAF into misuse of EU funds by Elios, after which it demanded the repayment of the entire €43.7 million EU subsidy.

Hungarian authorities carried out a competition inquiry involving Elios in 2015 without finding any crime.

The EC declined to comment on the new investigation.