The EU Court of Justice holds that the actual effects of the infringement do not have to be taken into account as part of the fine calculation in abuse of dominance cases (Orange Polska)

On 25 July 2018 the CJEU dismissed an appeal by Orange Polska SA against a GCEU judgment upholding an EC decision that imposed a fine of more than EUR 127 million on Orange for abusing its dominant position. The CJEU confirmed that, as in the case of a cartel, the EC does not have to take account of the actual effects of the infringement in its assessment of the gravity of the infringement for purposes of calculating the fine in a case of abuse of dominance. EC Decision By decision of 22 June 2011, the EC found that Orange, a telecommunications company, had abused its dominant position in the wholesale bit-stream access market and the wholesale local-loop unbundling market by developing and implementing a strategy aimed at limiting competition at