The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed Scania’s appeal against a €880,523,000 EU fine for being part of a price fixing cartel.
The ruling relates to the European Commission’s (EC) antitrust investigations into the truck cartel, which was launched in 2010 and saw the EC carry out dawn raids at the offices of Scania, DAF, Daimler, Iveco, and Volvo/Renault in 2011.
German truck manufacturer MAN was also involved but was granted immunity after bringing the cartel to the attention of the authorities, and as such avoided a fine of around €1.2 billion under the EC’s 2006 leniency notice.
The cartel members were found guilty of fixing the price of their trucks to pass on the cost of required environmental upgrades to their customers and protect their profits.
However, Volkswagen Group-owned Scania has always insisted it is innocent of the charges and has made successive appeals against the fine of more than €880 million. It was the only manufacturer to insist it was innocent of the charges of price fixing and collusion and to challenge its fine in the EU courts.
In September 2017, the European Commission found that Scania had also broken EU competition rules, as it had colluded for 14 years, from January 1997 to January 2011, with the other truck manufacturers (Daimler, MAN, Iveco, DAF and Volvo/Renault) on truck pricing and on passing on the costs of new technologies to meet stricter emission rules.
Scania appealed that decision but lost its appeal in 2022.
Scania then brought a further appeal against the decision before the European Court of Justice, which was dismissed by the General Court to the Court of Justice earlier this month (February).
This final ruling now means Scania must assume joint and several liability for the other cartel participants, allowing the injured parties to assert their claims for damages against Scania.
In a statement, the Court of Justice said: “Scania appealed against the judgement of the General Court to the Court of Justice, which today dismisses it in its entirety, thereby upholding the judgement of the General Court.
“The Court of Justice finds that Scania has not succeeded in demonstrating that the General Court failed to assess whether the administrative procedure, resumed against Scania after its withdrawal from the settlement procedure allowing the parties in the cartel cases to acknowledge their liability and to receive, in exchange, a reduction in the amount of the fine imposed, complied with the principle of impartiality.”
