Luxembourg, 04/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Justice will publish its ruling on the Tetra Laval case on 15 February, on the European Commission's appeal against the world's leading cardboard packaging ('Tetrapak') company. On 25 October 2002, the European Court of First Instance annulled the Commission decision banning the planned merger of Tetra Laval and French company Sidel, also annulling the decision for the companies to split. The Court of First Instance ruled that the European Commission's impact study on the immediate anti-competitive fallout of the deal was based on insufficient evidence and the Commission committed a number of errors of judgement.
In its appeal, the European Commission called for the Court of First Instance's ruling to be annulled, arguing that it posed legal problems for various areas of the Commission's merger control work. The Commission also argued that the Court of First Instance demanded disproportionate evidence from the Commission which was impossible to provide in practice in company merger cases.