Appeal brought on 27 July 2015 by Timab Industries and Cie financière et de participations Roullier (CFPR) against the judgment of the General Court (Eighth Chamber, Extended Composition) delivered on 20 May 2015 in Case T-456/10 Timab Industries and CFPR v Commission

(Case C-411/15 P)

Language of the case: French

Parties

Appellants: Timab Industries and Cie financière et de participations Roullier (CFPR) (represented by: N. Lenoir, avocate)

Other party to the proceedings: European Commission

Form of order sought

The appellants claim that the Court should:

set aside the judgment delivered by the General Court on 20 May 2015 in Case T-456/10;

refer the case back to the General Court for the purpose of reducing the amount of the fine as appropriate;

as an incidental point, find that, by virtue of the unreasonable length of the judicial proceedings, the General Court infringed the right to a fair trial;

order the Commission to pay the costs in their entirety.

Grounds of appeal and main arguments

In support of their appeal, the appellants rely on five grounds of appeal.

In the first place, the General Court disregarded the rules relating to the burden of proof and infringed the rights of the defence by holding that it was for the appellants to prove, during the settlement procedure, that they had not participated in the cartel prior to 1993.

In the second place, the appellants accuse the General Court of having infringed the right not to self-incriminate and the rights of the defence. By not verifying whether the Commission was obliged to provide evidence to support its classifying the appellants’ statements as ‘admissions’, which had a significant effect on the decision regarding the amount of the fine, the General Court misconstrued its unlimited jurisdiction.

In the third place, the General Court misconstrued the scope of its unlimited jurisdiction by regarding as ‘new information’ the acknowledgement by the Commission, following the appellants’ withdrawal from the settlement procedure, that the appellants had not participated in the cartel between 1978 and 1992 in order to justify ordering the payment of a significantly larger fine for an infringement which had taken place over a considerably shorter period.

In the fourth place, the General Court misconstrued its unlimited jurisdiction, vitiated its judgment with contradictory reasoning, erred in law in its application of the settlement procedure and failed to observe the principles of legitimate expectations and equal treatment by endorsing the withdrawal of almost all the reductions for cooperation granted during the settlement procedure, which the appellants could not reasonably have anticipated occurring to such an extent.

In the fifth place, the appellants accuse the General Court of having misconstrued its unlimited jurisdiction and of having failed to observe the principle of equal treatment and the principle that penalties should be tailored to the individual.

As an incidental point, the appellants ask the Court to find that — given the unreasonable length of the proceedings — the General Court disregarded the right to a fair trial, in breach of the second paragraph of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

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