The EU Court of Justice upholds the Commission’s right to continue inspection at Brussels premises in Power Cable cartel case (Nexans)

On 16 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (the “ECJ”) delivered a judgment dismissing the appeal by Nexans France and its parent company Nexans (together “Nexans”) against the judgment of the General Court of the European Union (the “GC”) in the Power Cables cartel case. By way of background, in 2014, the European Commission adopted a decision in which it imposed fines totalling €302 million on a number of producers of underground and submarine high voltage power cables for their involvement in a customer and market allocation cartel. Nexans was fined € 70,670,000 for its involvement in the infringement. In its decision, the Commission had found that the cartel comprised two configurations. The first configuration, consisting of European, Japanese and South Korean