136Third, the applicant considers that, even if the Commission could impose an obligation in a decision granting exemption in order to prevent a restriction of fictitious competition on a secondary market, it was not entitled to do so in the form of an obligation, which is a wholly separate measure (Article 15(2)(b) of Regulation No 17), but only in the form of a condition making that agreement ‘eligible for exemption’ (Joined Cases T-79/95 and T-80/95 SNCF and British Railways v Commission [1996] ECR II-1491, paragraph 63 et seq.). That is confirmed by the previous practice of the Commission (quoted in the reply, footnotes 20 and 21), which has almost always coupled its decisions granting exemption with conditions and not obligations, if, and in so far as, it considers a particular form of action to be necessary to prevent the elimination of competition for the purposes of Article 81(3) EC.
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