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Brussels--The European Commission (EC) announced on Friday that it is investigating claims that luxury watchmakers are refusing to supply independent watch repairers with spare parts, a breach of the European Union’s (EU) competition rules.

Traditionally, independent watch repairers have fixed timepieces from a wide variety of brands.

In 2004, however, the European Confederation of Watch & Clock Repairers’ Associations (CEAHR) lodged a complaint claiming that in 2002, luxury watch manufacturers began refusing to supply spare parts to repairers that didn’t belong to their selective systems for repair and maintenance.

The CEAHR alleged in the complaint that since the repairers couldn’t get these parts anywhere else, the watch companies’ refusal to supply them could potentially drive the repairers out of business and was therefore a breach of EU competition law.

In July 2008, the EC rejected the CEAHR’s complaint, citing “lack of community interest.”

This past December, the General Court of the European Union annulled the EC’s rejection of the issue, forcing the commission to take another look at it. The court said that the EC did not sufficiently demonstrate why there wasn’t enough community interest to press forward with the investigation.

How long the investigation will take or what it could potentially mean for the watch industry at this point remains unclear.

“An initiation of proceedings does not imply that the commission has conclusive proof of an infringement. It only means that the commission will investigate the case as a matter of priority,” the EC said in its statement on the investigation released on Friday.