The General Court of the EU supported, on Wednesday 22 September (Case T-425/18), the European Commission’s decision to impose two fines of €62.25 million each on the multinational company Altice for infringing the provisions of the Merger Regulation (see EUROPE 12008/17).
These provisions require that concentrations be notified to the Commission before they are implemented and prohibit their implementation before they are notified and declared compatible with the internal market.
However, according to an investigation conducted by the Commission, Altice - authorised to take sole control of the Portuguese telecoms operator PT Portugal - is said to have intervened in the day-to-day running of the operator and to have exchanged sensitive information concerning it before the merger was completed and, in some cases, even before it was notified and authorised.
Altice had appealed against the Commission’s decision, invoking that it was an infringement of the principles of proportionality and the prohibition of double punishment. The multinational also argued that the obligation to notify the merger and the obligation not to implement the merger before its notification and authorisation were “redundant”.
All these arguments were rejected by the Court on Wednesday. The European judges considered that the two obligations “pursue autonomous objectives” and do not violate either the principle of proportionality nor the prohibition of double punishment.
They further point out that declaring these provisions illegal “would deprive the Commission of the possibility of establishing a distinction [...] between a situation in which the undertaking complies with the notification obligation but infringes the standstill obligation, and a situation in which the undertaking infringes both obligations”.
Although it found in favour of the Commission, the Court nevertheless ordered the amount of the fine relating to the breach of the obligation to notify the concentration to the Commission be reduced by €6.22 million. Prior to the signature of the share purchase agreement, Altice had, in effect, “informed the Commission of the transaction it was to undertake”.
See the judgment: https://bit.ly/3zruIXC (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)