EU competition law: General Court confirms Commission's rejection of a complaint on the ground that national competition authority is already dealing with the case (T-201/11)
The General Court of the European Union concluded in the case T-201/11 Si. mobil telekomunikakcijske storitve v Commission on 17 December 2014 that the Commission was entitled to reject a complaint when a national competition authority was already dealing with the case.
This is a landmark judgment as the decision represents the first interpretation of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition law laid down in Articles 81 [EC] and 82 [EC] (now Articles 101 and 102 TFEU) on that topic. One of the objectives of the Regulation is to ensure that cases are dealt with by the most appropriate authorities within the European Competition Network.
Some conditions must be met to reject such double assessment: first, the case submitted to both the national authority and the Commission must be the same; second, the case must relate to the same agreement, association decision or practice.
In the present case, the Court found that:
"as the Slovenian competition authority was already actively dealing with the case, the Commission was not required to carry out an assessment as to whether the approach adopted by that authority was well founded. As regards the second condition, the Court reaches the same conclusion as that of the Commission, namely that the procedure before the Slovenian competition authority concerned the same infringements, on the same market, within the same timeframe as those referred to on the Retail market in the complaint submitted to the Commission by Si.mobil."
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