The European Commission welcomes today's judgment by the EU Court of Justice (EUCJ, case C-286/13 P) dismissing the appeal brought by banana importer Dole against a General Court (GC) judgment of 2013 (case T-588/08).
The judgment entirely confirmed the Commission's assessment of the bananas cartel case in relation to Dole. It also confirms that communications between competitors leading to horizontal price-fixing through a cartel are anticompetitive by their very object and amount to a violation of EU antitrust rules, without requiring an analysis of their effect on competition in the market. In October 2008, the Commission fined Dole, Weichert and Del Monte a total of €60.3 million for participating in a cartel for bananas in Northern Europe.
A statement is available online.
