Brussels, 02/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - In its ruling of 29 June (Cases T-360/09 and T-370/09), the General Court of the EU reduced the fines of €553 million imposed by the European Commission on GDF and E.ON for sharing the French and German markets for natural gas to €320m for each company. The Commission had found that the companies were in breach of competition law (see EUROPE 9938). The General Court confirmed the main points of the Commission decision but found that there were nevertheless two errors on the Commission's part: (1) as regards the beginning of the infringement on the German market, the Commission has not established the existence of potential competition between the two companies from 1 January 1980 to 24 April 1998, which the MEGAL agreement could have adversely affected (an agreement concluded in 1975 between E.ON and GDF for the construction of a gas pipeline to import Russian gas to Germany and France, which became operational on 1 January 1980); and (2) as regards the end of the infringement on the French market, the Commission did not adduce any evidence that the infringement of the French market continued after August 2004 (the date of signing an agreement when the two companies considered the anti-competitive parties of the MEGAL agreement as having been “null and void” for a long time) and until September 2005. On this basis, and to take account the seriousness of the infringement, the General Court decided to reduce the fine to a level above that resulting from the calculation applied initially by the Commission. (FG/transl.fl)