Brussels, 22/06/2012 (Agence Europe) - Advocate General Yves Bot proposes that the Court of Justice should partially annul the judgment of the General Court concerning the breaking of a seal committed by E.ON Energie during an inspection in competition matters. According to the conclusions reached by the advocate general and published on Thursday 21 June, the General Court did not exercise its unlimited jurisdiction when examining the proportionality of the fine imposed by the Commission for that infringement.
With its decision of 30 January 2008, the European Commission imposed a fine of €38 million on E.ON Energie for breaking the seal. E.ON Energie sought the annulment of that decision by bringing an action before the General Court, which was dismissed by judgment of 15 December 2010. E.ON Energie therefore lodged an appeal against the judgment of the General Court.
In conclusions presented on 21 June, the advocate general underlines that, in exercising its unlimited jurisdiction, the General Court is required to comply with the principle of proportionality. The advocate general finds that, in the present case, the General Court did not fully exercise its unlimited jurisdiction in assessing the proportionality of the amount of the fine imposed on E.ON Energie. Yves Bot considers the General Court did not carry out an assessment that was sufficiently independent of that adopted by the Commission in so far as it relied solely on the amount fixed in a rather general way by the Commission.
The advocate general, moreover, finds that the General Court did not have all the financial information, such as the exact turnover of E.ON Energie, necessary to assess the proportionality of the amount of the fine imposed by the Commission on that company. The advocate general considers it essential to know and to consider those financial figures in order to assess the fine justly. In those circumstances, Yves Bot proposes that the Court of Justice should set aside the judgment of the General Court in so far as the latter did not exercise its unlimited jurisdiction when examining the proportionality of the fine imposed by the Commission on E.ON Energie. Since, according to the advocate general, the dispute is not capable of being adjudicated upon by the Court of Justice, he proposes that the latter should refer the matter back to the General Court for it to rule on the proportionality of the fine in question. (LC/transl.jl)