Judgment_paragraph 485 · Compagnie générale maritime and Others v Commission of the European Communities (T-86/95)

485Fifthly, numerous factors led the applicants to believe that the contested agreement was lawful. Besides the longstanding and public nature of the contested agreement, it should be stressed particularly that in a joint declaration annexed to the minutes of the Council meeting at which Regulation No 4056/86 was adopted, the Commission itself stated as follows: ‘multimodal sea/land transport operations are subject to the rules of competition adopted for land transport and to those laid down for sea transport. In practice, non-application of Article 85(1) [of the EEC Treaty] will be the rule as regards the organisation and execution of successive or supplementary multimodal... transport operations and the fixing or application of inclusive rates for such transport operations, since both Article 2 of Regulation No 4056/86 and Article 3 of Regulation No 1017/68 state that the prohibition laid down by Article 85(1) of the Treaty shall not apply to such practices’. Whilst there is no need in the context of the present plea to rule on the meaning and precise scope of that declaration, it suffices to point out that it at least gave rise to doubts on the part of the applicants and led them to believe that their agreement was not unlawful.

Compagnie générale maritime and Others v Commission of the European Communities (T-86/95)

History · 1 version

Key facts

Connections