82In the event that the referring court were also to find there to be, a priori, strong indications capable of demonstrating that the MIF Agreement triggered such upwards pressure or, at the very least, contradictory or ambivalent evidence in that regard, such indications or evidence cannot be ignored by that court in its examination of whether, in the present instance, there is a restriction ‘by object’. Contrary to what it appears may be inferred from the Commission’s written observations in this connection, the fact that, if there had been no MIF Agreement, the level of interchange fees resulting from competition would have been higher is relevant for the purposes of examining whether there is a restriction resulting from that agreement, since such a factor specifically concerns the alleged anticompetitive object of that agreement as regards the acquiring market in Hungary, namely that that agreement limited the reduction of the interchange fees and, consequently, the downwards pressure that merchants could have exerted on the acquiring banks in order to secure a reduction in the service charges.
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