Judgment of the General Court Fourth Chamber, Extended Composition, 14 December 2022, PT Pelita Agung Agrindustri and PT Permata Hijau Palm Oleo v Commission, T-143/20

• Date: 14 December 2022
• Year: 2022

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Lastly, the Court rejects the complaints alleging that the Commission erred in finding that there was a

threat of material injury to the Union industry, inasmuch as it concluded that there was a causal link

between the imports from Indonesia and the threat of m aterial injury to the Union industry, without

taking into account the impact of imports of biodiesel originating in Argentina.

In that regard, the Court recalls that, in accordance with Article 8(6) of the basic anti-subsidy

regulation, when examining a causal link between the injury caused to the Union industry and the

imports of the subsidised product, the Commission must disregard any injury resulting from other

factors and thus ascertain that the effects of those other factors are not capable of breaking the

causal link that it has established. However, in order for a causal link to exist, it is not necessary for

the imports of the subsidised product to be the sole cause of the injury caused to the Union industry,

since the Commission may attribute responsibility for injury to the subsidised imports even if their

effects are only part of wider injury attributable to other factors.

It is in the light of those considerations that the Court finds, first, that the persistence of a threat of

injury linked to imports of biodiesel from Argentina does not preclude the existence of another threat

of injury caused by imports of biodiesel from Indonesia. Second, since the imports from Argentina

had already been the subject of countervailing measures, they were not capable of breaking the

causal link between imports from Indonesia and the threat of injury to the Union industry. The Court

also holds that, despite those imports from Argentina, the threat of injury caused by imports from

Indonesia was significant and the causal link between those imports and the threat of injury to the

Union industry could be established.

In the light of the foregoing, the Court dismisses the action in its entirety.

Judgment of the General Court (Fourth Chamber, Extended Composition), 14 December

2022, PT Pelita Agung Agrindustri and PT Permata Hijau Palm Oleo v Commission, T-143/20

Link to the full text of the judgment

(Subsidies – Imports of biodiesel originating in Indonesia – Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2092 –

Definitive countervailing duty – Article 8(1) and (2) of Regulation (EU) 2016/1037 – Price undercutting –

Price pressure – Article 8(5) of Regulation 2016/1037 – Causal link – Article 3(1)(a)(iv) and (2) of Regulation

2016/1037 – Action consisting in ‘entrusting’ or ‘directing’ a private body to carry out a function

constituting a financial contribution – Less than adequate remuneration – Income or price support –

Article 3(2) and Article 6(d) of Regulation 2016/1037 – Be nefit – Article 3(1)(a)(i) and (2) of Regulation

2016/1037 – Direct transfer of funds – Article 7 of Regulation 2016/1037 – Calculation of the amount of

the benefit – Article 8(1) and (8) of Regulation 2016/1037 – Threat of material injury – Rights of the

defence)

At the end of an anti-subsidy investigation initiated in 2018, the European Commission adopted

Implementing Regulation 2019/2092 imposing a definitive countervailing duty on imports of biodiesel

originating in Indonesia

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(‘the product under consideration’).

The Indonesian companies PT Pelita Agung Agrindustri and PT Permata Hijau Palm Oleo, which

produce biodiesel and export it to the European Union, brought an action for annulment of that

implementing regulation.

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Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2092 of 28 November 2019 imposing a definitive countervailing duty on imports of

biodiesel originating in Indonesia (OJ 2019 L 317, p. 42).