Judgment — ECLI:EU:C:2014:349
Date: 2014-05-22
Language of the case: Spanish
Court formation: Sixth Chamber
Subject matter: Competition;Agreements, decisions and concerted practices;Concerted practices
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded;Appeal against penalty
Origin: Spain

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Sixth Chamber), 22 May 2014 1. Competition — EU rules — Infringements — Attribution — Parent company and subsidiaries — Economic unit — Criteria for assessment — Presumption that the parent company exercises decisive influence over a subsidiary in which it owns all, or virtually all, the shares — Commission entitled to hold the parent company liable for the unlawful conduct of its subsidiary (Art. 81(1) EC) 2. Appeal — Pleas in law — Inadequate statement of reasons — Reliance by the General Court on implied reasoning — Lawfulness — Conditions (Art. 256 TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Arts 36 and 53, first para.; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 81) 3. Appeal — Pleas in law — Incorrect assessment of the facts — Inadmissibility — Review by the Court of the assessment of the facts and evidence — Possible only where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted (Art. 256(1) TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 58, first para.) 1. See the text of the decision. (see paras 16-20) 2. The obligation on the General Court, under Article 36 and the first paragraph of Article 53 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, to state the reasons on which its judgments are based does not require the General Court to provide an account that follows exhaustively and one by one all the arguments articulated by the parties to the case. Where the General Court has examined the arguments put forward by the applicant in such a way that its reasoning is sufficient to enable the latter to ascertain the reasons on which the General Court has relied in giving judgment, the fact that there is only a brief explanation as to why certain of those arguments have been rejected cannot be regarded as an infringement of the obligation to state the reasons on which the judgment is based. (see paras 31, 32) 3. See the text of the decision. (see para. 33)