32The Commission submits that, in holding, in paragraph 116 of the judgment under appeal, that the principle of personal liability cannot be called into question by the principle of economic continuity in cases where, as in the present case, an undertaking involved in the cartel transfers a part of its business to an independent third party and there is no structural link between the transferor and the transferee, the General Court treated two distinct transactions as one and confused the applicable legal criteria. The General Court regarded as relevant only the second of those two transactions, relating to the sale of a subsidiary by one group to another, namely the sale of ITR Rubber by the Saiag group to the Parker-Hannifin group. However, it ignored the first transaction, prior to that sale, involving the transfer of activities between two entities of the same group, namely between ITR SpA and ITR Rubber, which both belonged to the Saiag group. According to the Commission, that transfer of activities took place in the circumstances required by the case-law for it to be viewed as a case of economic continuity since, at the date at which it took place, the two entities concerned were controlled by the same person within the group and had close economic and organisational links (see, inter alia, judgment in ETI and Others, C‑280/06, EU:C:2007:775, paragraphs 48 and 49).
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