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EU court cuts fine for car window cartel

27 March 2014, 16:00 CET
EU court cuts fine for car window cartel

car windscreens

(LUXEMBOURG) - A European Union court ordered on Thursday that a multi-million dollar fine imposed on a French company in 2008 over a car window cartel be cut by 30 percent.

The ruling of the General Court found that the European Commission, the EU's executive, had been wrong to add 60 percent to the initial fine imposed on building materials supplier Saint-Gobain.

The Commission had said that the increase was a punishment for the company's "repeated infringement".

The Luxembourg-based court ordered that the fine on Saint-Gobain for its part in the cartel be reduced from 880 million euros ($1.2 billion) to 715 million euros.

This was because the company "could not be held liable" for anti-competitive practices for which a subsidiary had been prosecuted in 1988.

The Commission had accused Saint-Gobain, a leading European supplier of building materials and of products made with glass, of having created a cartel between 1998 and 2003 with Japanese company Asahi, Belgian firm Soliver and Pilkington, a British glass manufacturer.

In 2008, the Commission had found that the companies had agreed to fix the prices of car windows which they supplied to car manufacturers, with the Saint-Gobain group and its parent company facing the highest fine.

However, the Court's Thursday ruling upheld the Commission's linking of the cartel to a separate antitrust decision against Saint-Gobain, in 1984, on the grounds that the company responsible for that infringement did have direct links to Saint-Gobain.

Judgement of the General Court in cases T-56/09, T-73/09 - Saint-Gobain Glass France and Others v Commission


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