Brussels, 16/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - With its ruling in case T-432/10 delivered on 16 October, the General Court of the EU upheld the European Commission's 2012 decision to reject the complaint lodged by Vivendi over France Télécom's pricing practices for certain wholesale telecommunication services. It rules that, as those services had only limited effects on the functioning of the retail markets and the possibility of proving an infringement of the competition rules was limited, the Commission decided, correctly, the EU had no interest in pursuing a detailed investigation.
In 2009, Vivendi and other companies complained of the high pricing practices of France Télécom (which later became Orange), the incumbent French telecommunications operator, for access to the local loop for its competitor retail suppliers of land-line and mobile telephony and broadband internet services. According to the complainant companies, France Télécom was seeking to squeeze out its retail market competitors by imposing excessively high pricing arrangements. The Commission rejected this complaint, taking the view that pursuing an enquiry would have been disproportionate in terms of the duration and resources required, having regard, first, to the limited impact which the practices in question were likely to have on the functioning of the internal market, and, secondly, to the difficulty of establishing breach of competition rules. Vivendi brought an action for the annulment of this decision.
The Court rejected the action, stating that: - neither the Commission nor the French authorities had found any evidence suggesting that France Télécom was engaged in anti-competitive practices to the detriment of its competitors at the time of the integration of Wanadoo Interactive, a former retail subsidiary, into the parent company; - the Commission concluded, rightly, that the method used by the competent French authority, ARCERP, to calculate the costs connected with the use of the local loop - that of “current economic costs” - was the most appropriate and that there was no evidence that the incorrect information communicated by France Télécom relating to its infrastructure investment had misled ARCEP. The Court also rejects Vivendi's claim that the Commission did not examine sufficiently the effects of France Télécom's contested practices on the retail market. It says the Commission rightly established that the abusive nature of the pricing practices of a dominant undertaking, such as France Télécom on the wholesale telecommunication market, must be determined on the basis of its own situation, and therefore on the basis of its own charges and costs, rather than on the basis of the situation of its competitors. (FG/transl.fl)