Keywords

Summary



Keywords

1. Competition - Fines - Amount - Appropriateness - Review by the Court - Factors which may be taken into account by the Community court - Information not contained in the decision imposing the fine and not required in the statement of reasons - Included

(EC Treaty, Arts 172 and 190 (now Arts 229 EC and 253 EC); Council Regulation No 17, Art. 17)

2. Competition - Fines - Decision imposing fines - Obligation to state reasons - Scope - Indication of the factors by which the Commission assessed the gravity and duration of the infringement - Sufficient indication - Subsequent communication of more precise information - No effect

(EC Treaty, Art. 190 (now Art. 253 EC); Council Regulation No 17, Art. 15(2), second subpara.)

3. Appeals - Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice - Challenge, on grounds of fairness, to the assessment by the Court of First Instance in regard to the amount of the fines imposed on the undertakings - Excluded

4. Competition - Fines - Amount - Determination thereof - Turnover taken into consideration - Value of deliveries internal to the undertaking - Included

(Council Regulation No 17, Art. 15(2))

5. Competition - Community rules - Infringements - Attribution - Legal person responsible for the operation of the undertaking at the time of the infringement

(EC Treaty, Art. 85(1) (now Art. 81(1) EC))

Summary

1. In actions contesting Commission decisions imposing fines on undertakings for infringement of the competition rules, the Community court has power to assess, in the context of the unlimited jurisdiction accorded to it by Article 172 of the Treaty (now Article 229 EC) and Article 17 of Regulation No 17, the appropriateness of the amounts of fines. That assessment may justify the production and taking into account of additional information which is not as such required, by virtue of the duty to state reasons under Article 190 of the Treaty (now Article 253 EC), to be set out in the decision.

( see paras 38, 40 )

2. The second subparagraph of Article 15(2) of Regulation No 17 provides that [i]n fixing the amount of the fine, regard shall be had both to the gravity and to the duration of the infringement. In those circumstances, the essential procedural requirement to state reasons is satisfied where the Commission indicates in its decision the factors which enabled it to determine the gravity of the infringement and its duration. If those factors are not stated, the decision is vitiated by failure to state adequate reasons.

The fact that more specific information, such as the turnover achieved by the undertakings or the rates of reduction applied by the Commission, were communicated subsequently, at a press conference or during the proceedings before the Court of First Instance, is not such as to call in question the adequacy of the statement of reasons in the decision. Where the author of a contested decision provides explanations to supplement a statement of reasons which is already adequate in itself, that does not go to the question whether the duty to state reasons has been complied with, though it may serve a useful purpose in relation to review by the Community court of the adequacy of the grounds of the decision, since it enables the institution to explain the reasons underlying its decision.

( see paras 41-42, 44 )

3. The Court of First Instance has unlimited jurisdiction when it rules on the amount of fines imposed on undertakings for infringements of Community law and it is not for the Court of Justice, when ruling on questions of law in the context of an appeal, to substitute, on grounds of fairness, its own assessment for that of the Court of First Instance in the matter.

( see para. 54 )

4. Article 15(2) of Regulation No 17 aims to ensure that the penalty is proportionate to the undertaking's size on the product market in respect of which the infringement was committed. To ignore the value of the undertaking's internal deliveries would inevitably give an unjustified advantage to vertically integrated companies. In such a case the benefit derived from the cartel might not be taken into account and the undertaking in question would avoid the imposition of a fine proportionate to its importance on the product market to which the infringement relates.

( see paras 61-62 )

5. It falls, in principle, to the legal or natural person managing the undertaking in question when the infringement was committed to answer for that infringement, even if, at the time of the decision finding the infringement, another person had assumed responsibility for operating the undertaking.

( see para. 71 )