Judgment of the Court (Second Chamber) of 20 January 2016 (request for a preliminary ruling from the Consiglio di Stato — Italy) — DHL Express (Italy) Srl, DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA v Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato

(Case C-428/14) ¹

(Reference for a preliminary ruling — Competition policy — Article 101 TFEU — Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 — International freight forwarding sector — National competition authorities — Legal status of instruments of the European Competition Network — Model Leniency Programme of that network — Application for immunity submitted to the Commission — Summary application for immunity submitted to national competition authorities — Relationship between those two applications)

Language of the case: Italian

Referring court

Consiglio di Stato

Parties to the main proceedings

Applicants: DHL Express (Italy) Srl, DHL Global Forwarding (Italy) SpA

Defendant: Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato

Interveners: Schenker Italiana SpA, Agility Logistics Srl

Operative part of the judgment

EU law, in particular Article 101 TFEU and Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 101 [TFEU] and 102 [TFEU], must be interpreted as meaning that the instruments adopted in the context of the European Competition Network, in particular the Model Leniency Programme of that network, are not binding on national competition authorities.

EU law, in particular Article 101 TFEU and Regulation No 1/2003, must be interpreted as meaning that there is no legal link between the application for immunity which an undertaking submits or is preparing to submit to the European Commission and the summary application submitted to a national competition authority in respect of the same cartel, requiring that authority to assess the summary application in the light of the application for immunity. Whether or not the summary application accurately reflects the content of the application for immunity submitted to the Commission is, in that respect, irrelevant.

Where the summary application submitted to a national competition authority has a more limited material scope than the application for immunity submitted to the Commission, that national authority is not required to contact the Commission or the undertaking itself, in order to establish whether that undertaking has found specific examples of unlawful conduct in the sector allegedly covered by the application for immunity, but which is not covered by the summary application.

EU law, in particular Article 101 TFEU and Regulation No 1/2003, must be interpreted as not precluding a national competition authority from accepting, in circumstances such as those at issue in the main proceedings, a summary application for immunity from an undertaking which had not submitted an application for full immunity to the Commission, but rather an application for reduction of the fine.

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¹ OJ C 462, 22.12.2014.