Brussels, 26/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission was within its rights to conduct inspections on four of the premises belonging to telecommunications group Orange (formerly France Télécom) in July 2013 as part of an investigation into abuse of dominant position in the area of reciprocal interconnection services in the area of internet connectivity. This is despite the fact that the French competition authority had cleared the group of similar accusations in the same area in 2012.
This was the ruling of the General Court of the EU on Tuesday 25 November (case T-402/13) in a case in which the French group claimed that the inspections ordered by the Commission were illegal, disputing their proportionality and necessity after the French competition authority had, as part of a national investigation, found that the practices alleged against Orange were not substantiated or did not constitute an abuse of a dominant position.
The Court dismissed Orange's action and confirmed the legality of the Commission decisions. In its ruling, the Court notes, firstly, that the Commission is not, in principle, bound by decisions taken by a national court or authority pursuant to Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and that the Commission may at any time take decisions relating to competition, even if they conflict with a national decision.
Secondly, it finds that the inspection decisions are not illegal, given that the authority had not conducted any inspection on Orange's premises and that its decision had therefore been taken solely on the basis of information voluntarily submitted by Orange. In that context, the Court observes that any anti-competitive conduct that might have taken place on Orange's part would be secret by its nature and that it is thus unlikely it would be apparent from material made publicly available by Orange or the information provided to the Commission by Orange or the national authority.
Finally, with regard to the alleged arbitrary nature of the Commission decisions, the Court finds that the nature of the suspected restrictions of competition was defined in sufficiently precise and detailed terms in the inspection decisions for the Court to be able to conclude that the inspection decisions were not arbitrary on the sole basis of the reasons underlying those decisions and thus does not need to examine the information in the Commission's possession at the date of the adoption of those decisions. (FG)