General Motors BV v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2006-04-06
51. In that regard, it is clear from Article 225 EC and the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice that the Court of First Instance has exclusive jurisdiction, first to find the facts except where the substantive inaccuracy of its findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it and, second, to assess those facts. When the Court of First Instance has found or assessed the facts, the Court of Justice has jurisdiction under Article 225 EC to review the legal characterisation of those facts by the Court of First Instance and the legal conclusions it has drawn from them (see, in particular, Case C-185/95 P Baustahlgewebe  v Commission  [1998] ECR I-8417, paragraph 23).
52. The Court of Justice thus has no jurisdiction to establish the facts or, in principle, to examine the evidence which the Court of First Instance accepted in support of those facts. Provided that the evidence has been properly obtained and the general principles of law and the rules of procedure in relation to the burden of proof and the taking of evidence have been observed, it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value which should be attached to the evidence produced to it (see, in particular, the order of 17 September 1996 in Case C-19/95 P San Marco  v Commission  [1996] ECR I-4435, paragraph 40). Save where the clear sense of the evidence has been distorted, that appraisal does not therefore constitute a point of law which is subject as such to review by the Court of Justice ( Baustahlgewebe , paragraph 24).
54. In that respect, it should be noted that such distortion must be obvious from the documents on the Court’s file, without there being any need to carry out a new assessment of the facts and the evidence (order of 9 July 2004 in Case C‑116/03 P Fichtner  v Commission , not published in the ECR, paragraph 34).
64. Regarding the first part of this ground of appeal, it is sufficient to note, as the Advocate General states in point 67 of his Opinion, that, contrary to what General Motors argues, an agreement may be regarded as having a restrictive object even if it does not have the restriction of competition as its sole aim but also pursues other legitimate objectives (Joined Cases 56/64 and 58/64 Consten and Grundig  v Commission  [1966] ECR 299, 342; IAZ , paragraph 25; Case C‑235/92 P Montecatini  v Commission  [1999] ECR I‑4539, paragraph 122; Joined Cases C‑238/99 P, C-244/99 P, C‑245/99 P, C‑247/99 P, C‑250/99 P to C‑252/99 P and C‑254/99 P Limburgse Vinyl Maatschappij and Others  v Commission  [2002] ECR I‑8375, paragraph 491).
66. As for the second part of the second ground of appeal, it is clear from the case-law cited in paragraph 102 of the contested judgment, as the Court of First Instance rightly states in that paragraph, that account must be taken not only of the terms of an agreement but also of other factors, such as the aims pursued by the agreement as such, in the light of the economic and legal context, in order to determine whether an agreement has a restrictive object for the purposes of Article 81 EC.
67. Even if the case-law cited in paragraph 102 of the contested judgment concerns export prohibitions or comparable restrictions, that case-law shows that an agreement concerning distribution has a restrictive object for the purposes of Article 81 EC if it clearly manifests the will to treat export sales less favourably than national sales and thus leads to a partitioning of the market in question (see in particular, to that effect, IAZ , paragraph 23).
68. As the Advocate General points out in point 72 of his Opinion, such an objective can be achieved not only by direct restrictions on exports but also through indirect measures, such as those at issue in this case, since they influence the economic conditions of such transactions.
69. The Court of First Instance was therefore justified in supporting its reasoning by reference to the case-law cited in paragraph 102 of the contested judgment.
72. Concerning the third part of the second ground of appeal, it is settled case-law that, in order to determine whether an agreement is to be considered to be prohibited by reason of the distortion of competition which is its effect, the competition in question should be assessed within the actual context in which it would occur in the absence of the agreement in dispute (Case C-7/95 P Deere  v Commission  [1998] ECR I-3111, paragraph 76; Case C-8/95 P New Holland Ford  v Commission  [1998] ECR I-3175, paragraph 90).