28The applicant recalls that, according to settled case-law, the Commission must produce sufficiently precise and consistent evidence to establish an infringement of Article 81 EC and that any doubt in the mind of the Court must operate to the advantage of the undertaking (Joined Cases T-67/00, T-68/00, T-71/00 and T-78/00 JFE Engineering and Others v Commission [2004] ECR II-2501, paragraph 179, and Joined Cases T-44/02 OP, T-54/02 OP, T-56/02 OP, T-60/02 OP and T-61/02 OP Dresdner Bank and Others v Commission [2006] ECR II-3567, paragraphs 60 and 62). It submits that, in this case, the Commission failed to observe those principles in its assessment of the existence of the infringement and in the classification of the nature of the infringement. It wrongly placed on an equal footing the very serious infringement committed by the bitumen suppliers (‘the suppliers’), constituted by the price and market-sharing cartel, and the mere joint negotiating structure set up by the large builders, which was aimed only at responding to the suppliers’ cartel and at securing more advantageous purchase conditions. As a result of that erroneous assessment of the operation of the cartel, the Commission attached too much importance to the suppliers’ statements and disregarded evidence mentioned in the statement of objections, some of which was contemporaneous with the infringement.
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