EU court overturns huge fines for air cargo 'cartel'
Justice - Photo © Yanchenko - Fotolia
(BRUSSELS) - An EU court Thursday overturned 790 million euros ($868 million) in fines imposed by Brussels on airlines including Air France-KLM, British Airways and Japan Airlines for running a global cargo cartel.
The General Court of the European Union, the second highest court in the 28-nation bloc, said in a ruling that the 2010 decision by the European Commission's competition watchdog was "contradictory".
The airlines affected spanned the globe, from Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific in Asia, to Air Canada and LAN Chile in the Americas, Qantas in Australia, and Scandinavia's SAS, Luxembourg's Cargolux and Martinair Holland.
Germany's Lufthansa escaped fines under the commission's leniency programme for being the first to provide information about the alleged cartel.
"The General Court annuls the decision by which the Commission imposed fines amounting to approximately euros 790 million on several airlines for their participation in a cartel on the airfreight market," the Luxembourg-based court said in a statement.
The decision can still go to appeal in the EU's top court, the European Court of Justice.
Brussels had accused the carriers of coordinating their action on surcharges for fuel and security without discounts over a six-year period between December 1999 and February 2006.
The alleged cartel covered flights from, to and within the European Economic Area.
But the court said that the Commission's decision contained a confusion about whether there had been four separate offences or one continuous offence coordinated as a whole by a cartel, giving the airlines justification for challenging it.
It said there were "internal inconsistencies" in the Commission's ruling case and that the grounds of the case were "difficult to reconcile with the existence of a single cartel covering all of the routes".
Air France-KLM, which suffered the biggest fine of around 300 million euros, welcomed the move and said it abided by competition laws.
"The group hails the decision of the court, which has completely annulled the European Commission's decision and the fines," it said in a statement.