The Hungarian Court of Appeal upholds the Competition Authority decision and also accepts the approach of the General Court regarding the reduction of the fines (GIS cartel)

The Budapest Court of Appeal upheld, in its second instance judgment, the verdict of the Metropolitan Court of Budapest in the "GIS cartel" case: the judgment confirmed the existence of the infringement, whilst it accepted the lower court's decision to decrease the fines imposed on the undertakings concerned. The Hungarian Competition Office (“HCO”) initiated an investigation into an alleged cartel by manufacturers active on the gas insulated switchgear (“GIS”) market on the basis of a leniency application (one of the very first leniency applications in Hungary). Since the European Commission initiated a parallel investigation into the same matter, the HCO only had jurisdiction to explore the cartel's activities in the period before Hungary's accession to the European Union, i.e. before