Luxembourg, 26/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of First Instance (CFI) has sentenced the European Commission to pay the Norwegian firm Fresh Marine, specialised in farmed Atlantic salmon, NOK 400,000 in damages for having been lax in the administrative management of its "anti-dumping" dossier. This is the first time that a company has secured damages in an anti-dumping case without having to prove "serious error" on the part of the Community institution: "the Commission committed (…) an irregularity that would not have been committed, in similar circumstances, by a normally cautious and diligent administration" declared the President of the Third Chamber, the Belgian judge Koenraad Lenaerts.
Fresh Marine exports salmon to the EU and, like dozens of other companies, had agreed not to sell its product beneath the average price, thereby avoiding the application of anti-dumping duties on the part of the European authorities. The Norwegian firm presented an initial report (intended to prove that it was respecting its undertakings) in which it corrected encoding mistakes by means of signs intended to eliminate erroneous accountancy headings. Corrections that the Commission took no account of and that distorted the report's conclusions. The latter thus revealed non-compliance of price undertakings. Consequently, the Commission slapped anti-dumping duties on the firm on 19 December in the middle of the Christmas period in which sales are substantial.
Its salmon no longer being competitive, Fresh Marine had stopped its exports and focused on the necessary legal measures for the Commission to acknowledge its mistake. Following repeated approaches by the near bankrupt company, the Commission admitted on January 1988 that Fresh Marine had always respected the export price to the EU.
The CFI also condemns the Commission for having told Fresh Marine that to make amends for its mistake it would have to wait for a Council decision, which alone could "abolish" the anti-dumping levy that had been imposed on the firm erroneously. The Third Chamber does, however, accuse Fresh Marine of a "lack of visibility" in its report, addressed to the Commission "without the slightest comment", thereby, "through its guilty negligence, confusing the agents (of the Commission)". Fresh Marine was demanding NOK two million. Its guilty negligence was one of the reasons for which it did not receive the sum it was demanding.