Judgment of the Court of Justice in Case C-221/22 P

PRESS RELEASE No 97/24 Luxembourg, 11 June 2024 Judgment of the Court in Case C-221/22 P | Commission v Deutsche Telekom The Commission must pay interest on fines it has unduly imposed in competition matters and which it has provisionally collected That interest is intended to compensate, at a standard rate, the undertaking concerned for the loss of enjoyment of the amount in question Where the General Court or the Court of Justice cancels or reduces a fine imposed by the Commission on an undertaking for infringement of the competition rules, the Commission must not only repay all or part of the amount of the fine provisionally paid by the undertaking, but it must also pay interest for the period from the date of provisional payment of that fine to the date of repayment. This is not a question of default interest’, but interest intended to compensate the undertaking at a standard rate for loss of enjoyment of the amount at issue. On 15 October 2014, the European Commission imposed on Deutsche Telekom AG a fine of approximately €31 million for abuse of a dominant position on the Slovak market for broadband telecommunications services. Deutsche Telekom brought an action for annulment of that decision before the General Court of the European Union, while provisionally paying the fine on 16 January 2015. The General Court upheld that action in part and reduced the amount of the fine by approximately €12 million 1. Therefore, the Commission repaid that...