Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2003:97
Date: 2003-04-03
Language of the case: French
Court formation: Fifth Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Competition;Agreements, decisions and concerted practices
Concepts: General;Commission discretion
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: France

Summary of the Order 
Applications for interim measures — Suspension of operation — Suspension of opera­
tion of a Commission decision relating to the control of concentrations — Conditions of 
granting — Serious and irreparable damage — Damage of a financial nature — 
Balancing of all the interests at issue 
(Art. 242 EC; Rules of Procedure of the Court of First Instance, Art. 104(2); Council 
Regulation No 4064/89) 
In the context of an application for suspen­
sion of operation of a Commission decision 
refusing to approve undertakings as pur­
chasers of certain assets divested in a 
procedure for the transfer of assets which is 
carried out pursuant to commitments 
entered into by the parties to a concentra­
tion, the damage resulting from being 
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SUMMARY — CASE T-342/00 R 
excluded from that procedure consists in a 
loss of profits caused by the fact that those 
undertakings do not have access to a given 
market. 
Since such damage is of a pecuniary nature, 
it cannot, in principle, be regarded as 
irreparable, or even reparable only with 
difficulty, if it may be the subject of 
subsequent financial compensation. 
The suspension sought would be justified, 
in those circumstances, only if it appeared 
that, without such relief, the undertakings 
concerned would be in a situation liable to 
jeopardise their very existence or irrepar­
ably modify their market shares. 
Furthermore, even if damage consisting 
principally in definitive exclusion from the 
divesting procedure at issue and in the 
impossibility of obtaining a share of a given 
market could constitute serious and irre­
parable damage, the balancing of, on the 
one hand, the interest of the undertakings 
concerned in obtaining the interim relief 
sought against, on the other, the public 
interest in implementation of decisions 
adopted under Regulation No 4064/89 
and the interests of third parties who would 
be directly affected by any suspension of 
operation of the decision at issue must lead 
to dismissal of such an application. 
(see paras 46-48, 51) 
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