Judgment_paragraph 159 · Toshiba Corp. v European Commission (T-104/13)

159In particular, first, the Commission considered, correctly, that the infringement had immediately affected the EEA, since the cartel arrangements had directly influenced the setting of prices and the setting of volumes of CRTs delivered to the EEA either directly or through transformed products, and that both CDTs and CPTs had been sourced and shipped directly from the production facilities of the cartel members in other parts of the world to the EEA. Secondly, the Commission was entitled to take the view that the effect of the infringement on the EEA was foreseeable as the cartelised prices and volumes had had an evident impact on the conditions of competition both between the CRT producers and at the downstream level. Moreover, as the Commission found, the participants in the CPT cartel not only colluded on prices, but also implemented coordinated output limitation that thus limited available supplies to the EEA from factories in the EEA and from outside the EEA. In addition, as found by the Commission, the cartel at issue had immediate and foreseeable effects on the EEA also in the case of vertically integrated suppliers such as Philips, LGE, Panasonic and the applicant, including through the deliveries of their respective joint ventures to the parent companies. Thirdly, the Commission rightly found that the effect of the CPT cartel had been substantial due to the seriousness of the infringement, its long duration and the role of the parties to that cartel on the European market for CRTs and for transformed products.