The Heineken Vergina ruling is in. The Amsterdam District Court has ordered Heineken and its Greek subsidiary Athenian Brewery to pay €111 million (about $124.5 million) to Macedonian Thrace Brewery (MTB), the maker of Vergina beer, the drinks business reports. Heineken says it will appeal.
A note on the date. The court’s published judgment is dated Oct. 21, 2026, and Reuters reported Heineken’s statement the same day. The drinks business story on the Heineken Vergina ruling ran on Oct. 22.
What the Heineken Vergina ruling orders
According to the judgment, Heineken and Athenian Brewery are jointly liable for €111.224 million. That breaks down as €43.337 million in damages and €67.887 million in interest. The court also ordered them to cover €800,000 in costs for MTB’s economic experts, Oxera, and declared the ruling provisionally enforceable.
In the Heineken Vergina ruling, the court found the two acted unlawfully toward MTB in the Greek beer market from September 1998 through Sept. 14, 2014. In setting the amount, it rejected Heineken’s defenses and drew heavily on the findings of Greek regulators, according to the drinks business.
How the Heineken Vergina ruling came about
MTB sued in Amsterdam in 2017. The claim followed a December 2015 decision by the Hellenic Competition Commission, which found that Athenian Brewery had abused its dominant position in the Greek beer market for at least 16 years to shut out rivals like MTB. Reuters says the Greek fine was €31.5 million, later cut to €26.7 million on appeal in 2017.
In October 2024, the Amsterdam court held that Heineken and Athenian Brewery form a single economic undertaking, so the parent is liable for the subsidiary. The judgment notes Heineken indirectly held 98.8% of Athenian Brewery. Heineken’s challenge to Dutch jurisdiction was rejected by the Dutch Supreme Court this June, after a February 2025 ruling from the European Court of Justice.
Heineken plans to appeal
The drinks business described the judgment as bringing the long-running proceedings to a close. Heineken disagrees. In a statement carried by Reuters, and also reported by De Telegraaf, the brewer said it would appeal. It argued that MTB’s claim was not realistic and that the court relied on assumptions about MTB’s sales, pricing and profitability in a hypothetical market.
“Those assumptions should be carefully tested against the available economic evidence and market developments during the relevant period,” Heineken said. “We do not believe the damages awarded adequately reflect those considerations.”
So the Heineken Vergina ruling settles the first-instance amount, not necessarily the final one. No appeal timeline has been published.
What MTB says the Heineken Vergina ruling means
MTB argues the case shows that “a multinational can no longer put artificial legal distance between itself and any of its subsidiaries that break the law.” MTB director Demetri Chriss told the drinks business that “an independent brewery has not only proven that it is possible to take on a parent company in its home court, but has also succeeded in holding the parent liable for the illegal conduct of its subsidiary.”
More claims are lined up
The Heineken Vergina ruling may not be the last. Per the drinks business:
- Carlsberg and its Greek subsidiary Olympic Brewery, whose brands include Mythos, Fix and Nissos, are pursuing a very similar claim in Amsterdam.
- In Austria, the Federal Competition Authority is pursuing Heineken and its subsidiary Brau Union before the Vienna Cartel Court over alleged misconduct resembling Athenian Brewery’s. The Association of Austrian Private Breweries says it is watching.
- In Greece, the competition commission has opened a new investigation into alleged beer-market abuses after its 2015 decision.
Those are claims and investigations, not findings. The Bureau will track the appeal and the Carlsberg case as they move through the Dutch courts.
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