Judgment of the General Court Third Chamber, Extended Composition, 12 March 2025, PGI Spain and Others v Commission, T-596/22

• Date: 12 March 2025
• Year: 2025

20

On that point, the Court recalls that, in accordance with po int 25 of the 2006 Guidelines, the

additional amount is calculated irrespective of the duration of an undertaking’s participation in the

infringement, in order, in particular, to deter undertakings from infringing competition law, even for a

short period. Therefore, t here was no need for t he Commission to take into acco unt the b revity of the

period of UniCredit’ s participation in the infringement, which was less t han three months.

Moreover, given that the Commission applied a specific additional amount of 17% of the proxy to

UniCredit and not 18% as for all the other banks concerned, in order to take account of the fact that

‘[UniCredit’s] trader was only active on the secondary market’, that bank could not criticise the

Commission for failing to take account of its specific situation and, therefore, for having breached the

principle that penalties m ust be specific to th e offender and t he offence.

UniCredit is also wrong to rely on a breach of th e principle of proportion ality by reaso n of the specific

rate of 17% applied to it as an ad ditional amount.

In the light of all the foregoing, the Court dismisses the actions brought by Natixis, BofA, Po rtigon and

UBS in their ent irety. By contrast, it annuls the contested decision in resp ect of UniCredit in so far as it

finds that that bank participated in the infringement at issue from 9 September to 28 November 2011,

and not from 26 September to 28 Novemb er 2011, and sets the amount of the fine imposed on that

ba nk at EUR 69 442 000. In the exercise of its unlimited jurisdiction, the Court sets the amount of the

fine imp osed on UniCredit at EUR 65 000 000.

The Court also annuls the contested decision in so far as it sets the amount of the fine imposed on

Nomura at EUR 129 573 000. Since the use of the ex act weighting data for the 32 cat egories of EGBs

relating to Nomura leads to a reduction in the proxy applied to Nomura, the Court sets the amount of

the fine imposed on that bank at EUR 125 646 000.

2. STATE AID

Judgment of the General Cour t (Third Chamber, Extended Composition), 12 Mar ch 2025,

PGI Sp ain a nd Others v Co mmission, T-596/22

Link to the full text of the judgment

State aid – Measure to reduce wholesale electricity prices in the Iberian Peninsula – Energy crisis –

Decision not to raise objections – No serious difficulties – Prin cip le of no n -discrimination –

Proportionality – Leg itimate exp ectatio ns

The General Court, ruling in extended composition, has dismissed the action for annulment bro ught

by several Spanish companies against the European Commission’s decision 23 which found, following

a preliminary examination procedure, that a notified aid measure for the reduction of wholesale

electricity prices in the Iberian Peninsula was compatible with the internal market. In that context, the

Court endorsed the Commission’s conclusion that the examination of the compatibility of that

measure with the internal market did not raise serious difficulties necessitat ing the initiation of t he

formal in vestiga tion pro cedure prov ided for in Art icle 108(2) TFEU.

In 2022, t he Kin gdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic notified the Commission of a measure

aiming to reduce the w holesale electricity price within their territories b y supporting the input costs of

fossil fu el techno logies (‘t he notified measure’).

That measure was to be financed in part by a contribution imposed on buyers on the wholesale

electricity market. Certain of those buyers, however, wo uld be exempt from payment of the

23 Commission Decision C(2022) 3942 fin al of 8 June 2022 on State aid SA .102454 (2022/N) – Spain and SA.102569 ( 2022/N) – P or tu ga l –

Production cost adjustment mechanism for the reduction of the electricity wholesale price in the Iberian market (‘the contested decision’).