52As the Court of Justice has observed, EU competition law is based on the principle of the personal liability of the economic entity which has committed the infringement. If the parent company is part of that economic unit, it is regarded as jointly and severally liable with the other legal persons making up that unit for the infringements of competition law. Even if the parent company does not participate directly in the infringement, it exercises, in such a case, a decisive influence over the subsidiaries which have participated in it. It follows that, in that context, the liability of the parent company cannot be regarded as strict liability (Case C-97/08 PAkzo Nobel and Others v Commission, paragraph 41 above, paragraph 77). In such a situation, the parent company is penalised for an infringement which it is deemed to have committed itself (Metsä-Serla and Others v Commission, paragraph 40 above, paragraph 34, and Schunk Kohlenstoff-Technik and Others v Commission, paragraph 45 above, paragraph 74).