In a judgment returned on Tuesday 3 July in joined cases T-379/10 and T-381/10, the judges of the General Court of the European Union upheld the fines handed down by the European Commission in 2010 to Sanitec Europe and its subsidiaries over a cartel on the market for bathroom fixtures and fittings.
On 23 June 2010, the Commission issued fines for a total in excess of €622 million to 17 manufacturers of bathroom fixtures and fittings over a cartel contrary to the rules of EU competition law (see EUROPE 10166). The institution considered that the anti-competition meetings held between 1992 and 2004, the coordination of annual price increases and the exchange of commercially sensitive information between the companies constituted a cartel.
Several of the companies in question then appealed to the General Court of the EU against the decision. On 16 September 2013, it rejected several of the appeals, but overturned the fines handed down to Allia and Produits céramiques de Touraine, then subsidiaries of Sanitec Europe, which had the effect of reducing the total amount of the fines for the Sanitec group by €7.11 million, from €57.69 to €50.58 million (see EUROPE 10923).
The Commission challenged this judgment before the Court of Justice of the European Union, which partially overturned it on 26 January 2017, considering in particular that the General Court had breached the obligation to state reasons and the rules on the administration of evidence concerning the involvement of Allia and Produits céramiques de Touraine in the cartel in question (see EUROPE 11712). The Court then referred the case back to the General Court.
With this judgment, the General Court revises its analysis carried out ahead of the 2013 judgment and considers that having studied all the evidence put forward by the Commission, it can be concluded that the two companies did participate in the cartel. The General Court has therefore decided to keep in place the fine of €57.69 million for the Sanitec group. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)