58According to the case-law of the Court of Justice, although Article 23(2) of Regulation No 1/2003 leaves the Commission a discretion, it nevertheless limits the exercise of that discretion by establishing objective criteria to which the Commission must adhere. Thus, first, the amount of the fine that may be imposed on an undertaking is subject to a quantifiable and absolute ceiling, so that the maximum amount of the fine that can be imposed on a given undertaking can be determined in advance. Second, the exercise of that discretion is also limited by rules of conduct which the Commission imposed on itself in the 2002 Leniency Notice and the 1998 Guidelines. Furthermore, the Commission’s well-known and accessible administrative practice is subject to unlimited review by the European Union judicature, whose settled case-law has enabled the concepts that Article 23(2) might contain to be defined. A prudent trader, if need be by taking legal advice, can thus foresee in a sufficiently precise manner the method of calculation and order of magnitude of the fines which he incurs for a given line of conduct, and the fact that that trader cannot know in advance precisely the level of the fines which the Commission will impose in each individual case cannot constitute a breach of the principle that penalties must have a proper legal basis (see also, to this effect, the judgment of 22 May 2008 in Case C-266/06 P Evonik Degussa v Commission and Council, paragraphs 50 to 55).
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