Enforcement of EU Competition Law Against Groups of Companies: The Calculation of Fines

Carsten Koenig

Chapter 10 in Research Handbook on Competition and Corporate Law, 2025, pp 193-217 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The European Court of Justice's controversial “economic unit” doctrine is relevant not only for establishing liability, but also for calculating fines. This chapter examines this function of the doctrine and discusses relevant decisions of the European Court of Justice, the General Court and the European Commission. It is argued that in cases where the addressee of the fine is part of an economic unit, the Commission should in principle be allowed to base the calculation of the fine on the respective corporate group as it existed at the time of the prohibition decision. Structural changes that have occurred during or after the infringement should generally not be taken into account. This is the only way to ensure that the fine reflects the actual economic strength of the addressee and has a real deterrent effect.

Keywords: Competition Law; Economic Unit; Fines; Deterrence; Multiplier; Guidelines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803920542
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803920559.00021 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21434_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().