Notice for the OJ

 

Action brought on 20 December 2001 by Roquette Frères S.A. against the Commission of the European Communities

    (Case T-322/01)

    Language of the case: French

An action against the Commission of the European Communities was brought before the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 20 December 2001 by Roquette Frères S.A., established at Lestrem (France), represented by Antoine Choffel and Olivier Prost, lawyers.

The applicant claims that the Court should:

(annul Article 1 of the contested decision in so far as it considers ( in the case of Roquette ( that the infringement lasted from February 1987 to June 1995;

(annul Article 3 of the contested decision in so far as it imposes a fine of 10.8 million euros on Roquette Frères;

(in the exercise of its unlimited jurisdiction, reduce the amount of the fine imposed on Roquette Frères;

(order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments:

By a decision adopted on 2 October 2001, the European Union imposed on the applicant company a fine of 10.8 million euros for having participated, together with other producers of sodium gluconate, in an agreement and/or concerted practice covering the entire European Economic Area whereby they shared out sales quotas between them, fixed the price of the product concerned and colluded as to the attribution of contracts concluded with customers.

By the present action, the applicant is contesting solely the level of the fine imposed. In support of its claims, it pleads:

(infringement of Article 15 of Regulation No 17 and violation of the principles of equality and proportionality, inasmuch as the Commission failed adequately to assess either the seriousness or the duration of the breach. More particularly, according to the applicant, the defendant included, in the turnover figure used to calculate the basic amount of the fine, the sales volumes relating to another product (stock-solutions) which never formed the subject-matter of the breach. In addition, the Commission fixed the date of the breach as June 1995, whereas the leader of the cartel in the Commission's eyes itself confirmed that Roquette had decided to cease providing statistics from 1994 onwards and various items of evidence arising from the Commission's investigations and from the cooperation provided by the various undertakings showed that Roquette had left the cartel in 1994;

(misapplication by the Commission of its guidelines for calculating fines, as regards mitigating factors, and of its communication concerning the non-imposition of fines or the reduction of the amount thereof in cartel cases. The applicant asserts in that connection that the defendant:

(assessed the supposed effects of the cartel without taking account of the information and evidence provided by the applicant, which show the limited effect which the cartel had on the market for the product in question;

(assessed the role played by Roquette in the cartel without taking account of part played by he applicant in restraining its implementation;

(minimised the nevertheless decisive nature of the information supplied by Roquette to prove the existence of the cartel and to explain the way in which it worked;

(violation of the principle ne bis in idem, inasmuch as the Commission failed to take account of the fact that Roquette had already been fined $2 500 000 by the US authorities on account of a breach concerning the same subject-matter as that giving rise to the contested decision.

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