New Holland Ford Ltd v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 1998-05-28
22 Article 168a of the EC Treaty and Article 51 of the EC Statute of the Court of Justice state that an appeal is to be limited to points of law and must be based on the grounds of lack of competence of the Court of First Instance, breach of procedure before it which adversely affects the interests of the appellant or infringement of Community law by the Court of First Instance.  Article 112(1)(c) of the Court's Rules of Procedure provides that an appeal must contain the pleas in law and legal arguments relied on.
25 It also follows from the foregoing provisions that an appeal may be based only on grounds relating to the infringement of rules of law, to the exclusion of any appraisal of the facts.  The Court of First Instance has exclusive jurisdiction, first, to establish 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 established or assessed the facts, the Court of Justice has jurisdiction under Article 168a of the Treaty 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, the order in San Marco v Commission, cited above, paragraph 39).
26 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 in San Marco v Commission, cited above, paragraph 40).  The appraisal by the Court of First Instance of the evidence put before it does not constitute, save where that evidence has been fundamentally distorted, a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice (judgment in Case C-53/92 P Hilti v Commission [1994] ECR I-667, paragraph 42).
72 With regard first of all to the Court's jurisdiction, it has already been recalled, at paragraph 25 of this judgment, that the Court has jurisdiction to examine the assessment made by the Court of First Instance where the substantive inaccuracy of the findings is apparent from the documents submitted to it.  Such inaccuracy must be obvious without its being necessary to undertake a fresh assessment of the facts.$
77 The appellant maintains that the Court of First Instance failed to apply correctly, as it ought to have done, the legal principle established in Case 27/76 United Brands v Commission [1978] ECR 207, paragraph 11, according to which, for the purposes of the application of Article 85 of the Treaty, reference must be made to the particular features of the product in question and to a clearly defined geographical area in which it is marketed and where the conditions of competition are sufficiently homogenous. The appellant alleges that the Court of First Instance did not examine the Commission's assessment but merely conducted a formalistic review of it.
83 In this connection, it is apparent from paragraph 56 of the contested judgment that the Court of First Instance, relying on United Brands by analogy, considered that the relevant market could be defined geographically as the area in which conditions of competition and, in particular, consumer demand, displayed sufficiently homogenous characteristics.  The Court of First Instance went on to consider that it was not ruled out that the agricultural tractor market was to be characterised as a Community-wide market.  It stated, however, that `assuming that view to be admissible, it does not in any event preclude the relevant market on which the effects of the practice are to be measured from being defined as a national market where, as in the present case, the practice objected to is geographically limited to the territory of one of the Member States' and that, `[i]n such a case, it is the suppliers themselves which, by the mere fact of their own conduct, have given that market the characteristics of a national market'.
84 As the Court of Justice has already held in other cases, in assessing the geographical area of the relevant market, the region in which the concerted practice produces its effects is one of the factors to be taken into consideration (see, to this effect, Case 5/69 Völk v Vervaecke [1969] ECR 295, paragraph 7, and Case 322/81 Michelin v Commission [1983] ECR 3461, paragraphs 25 to 28).   By setting up an information exchange system to disseminate to members of that system who are suppliers of the United Kingdom market data concerning sales on that market, the agreement itself confines its effect to the United Kingdom market so that it alone presents features which are sufficiently homogeneous to be analysed for anti-competitive effects.  Consequently, the Court of First Instance did not err in law in reviewing the definition of the geographical market.
90 According to the settled case-law of the Court, 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 (see, in particular, Case 56/65 Société Technique Minière [1966] ECR 337 and Case 31/80 L'Oréal v De Nieuwe AMCK [1980] ECR 3775, paragraph 19).
91 Article 85(1) does not restrict such an assessment to actual effects alone; it must also take account of the agreement's potential effects on competition within the common market (see, to this effect, Case 31/85 ETA v DK Investment [1985] ECR 3933, paragraph 12, and Joined Cases 142/84 and 156/84 BAT and Reynolds v Commission [1987] ECR 4487, paragraph 54).  As the Court of First Instance correctly reiterated, an agreement will, however, fall outside the prohibition in Article 85 if it has only an insignificant effect on the market (Case 5/69 Völk v Vervaecke, cited above, paragraph 7).