On 13 December, the European Commission (EC) reconfirmed three decisions imposing fines on the Belgian chemicals company Solvay, a major producer of soda ash, and on the UK operation ICI. The Commissi…
On 13 December, the European Commission (EC) reconfirmed three decisions imposing fines on the Belgian chemicals company Solvay, a major producer of soda ash, and on the UK operation ICI. The Commission fined the two companies for breaches of the European competition rules committed during the 1980s. The original decisions had been annulled by the European Court of Justice on procedural grounds. The fines remain unchanged, at Euro 23 million for Solvay and Euro 10 million for ICI. On 6 April 2000, the Court of Justice upheld an earlier judgment of the Court of First Instance. It annulled three Commission decisions which found that Solvay and a German company had entered into an unlawful restrictive practice, and that Solvay and ICI had been abusing their dominant positions. The Court struck down the decisions on procedural grounds. The German company did not appeal against the Commission decision in its case, and paid a fine of Euro 1 million. The Court annulled the decisions because they had been authenticated by the signatures of the Commission“s President and Secretary-General only after they had already been notified to their addressees. Solvay has said that it had already made provisions for the fine when it was originally levied 10 years ago.