Judgment_paragraph 168 · Air Canada v European Commission (C-367/22 P)

168Last, as regards the fourth part, alleging that the General Court erred in law in finding, in the present case, that the existence of a competitive relationship was irrelevant for the purpose of assessing the existence of a single and continuous infringement, whereas the case-law stemming from, inter alia, the judgment of 26 January 2017, Duravit and Others v Commission (C‑609/13 P, EU:C:2017:46), is not applicable in the present case, since that case-law is limited to the particular facts and circumstances of each case and does not lend itself to axiomatic and general application, it must be stated that Air Canada has not adduced any evidence to show how the present case differs from that which gave rise to that judgment, in paragraph 124 of which the Court of Justice held that the existence of a competitive relationship between the participating undertakings is not a requirement for classifying anticompetitive conduct as a single and continuous infringement. Since that assessment is not linked to the degree of gravity of the infringement, Air Canada cannot rely on the allegedly ‘attenuated and highly speculative’ nature of the single and continuous infringement at issue in the present case. Nor can it claim that the material and geographic scope of the latter infringement is broader than that of the single and continuous infringement at issue in the case that gave rise to that judgment.