Luxembourg, 27/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank, found guilty in December 2001 of concerted action on bank commissions (since abolished), has appealed before the European Court of First Instance. During the procedure, it says, the Commission "did not act with a view to punishing an infringement of the rules on cartels but rather with a view to lowering, for political reasons, the charges for exchanging currencies, which it regarded as too high. It went on to explain that those banks which, faced with that pressure, declared themselves willing to lower the charges had been removed from the procedure, regardless of their role in the alleged infringement of the rules on cartels. The Commission thus misused the provisions of competition law in order to regulate prices, which it was not in its power to do".
The same argument was taken up by Deutsche Verkehrsbank, which criticises the "extra-legal political objectives", namely the making of a gesture to the public in connection with the introduction of the euro. Commerzbank stated "the Commission attached greater importance to the rapid imposition of a fine for political reasons than to a fair hearing". The three banks challenge the existence of the "alleged agreement", deny having had full access to the dossier and consider that the Commission 's decision is null and void because it is insufficiently motivated. The Dresdner Bank, also condemned to paying EUR 28 million, specifies it was never allowed to "have sight of the files relating to the circumstances resulting in the decision to discontinue the procedure against other banks".
During the announcement of the European Commission's decision, Commissioner Monti had intervened to recall that the banks were free to fix the amount of their bank charges, but under no circumstances were they to come to an agreement among themselves to fix such charges by common accord (see EUROPE of 12 December 2001).
It should be noted that the four banks arrived at the Court in a disorganised manner, each having chosen a different lawyer in its defence (Ed.: as the Court of First Instance must answer each argument put forward by the companies, the proceedings are expected to take some time).