Judgment_paragraph 56 · InnoLux Corp. v European Commission (C-231/14 P)

56As the General Court found in essence in paragraph 71 of the judgment under appeal, and as the Court of Justice has also held, vertically-integrated undertakings may benefit from a horizontal price-fixing agreement concluded in breach of Article 101 TFEU, not only when sales are made to independent third parties on the market for the goods the subject of the infringement, but also on the downstream market in processed goods made up of, inter alia, the goods which are the subject of the infringement, and is so for two different reasons. Either the price increases of the inputs which result from the infringement are passed on by those undertakings in the price of the processed goods, or those undertakings do not pass these increases on, which thus effectively grants them a cost advantage in relation to their competitors which obtain those same inputs on the market for the goods which are the subject of the infringement (judgment in Guardian Industries and Guardian Europe v Commission, C‑580/12 P, EU:C:2014:2363, paragraph 60).