The EU's competition commissioner went to great lengths on Wednesday to create as much time as possible between the Intel cartel case, which the Brussels authority has now lost with a crash before the EU court in Luxembourg.

It was all more than ten years ago, said Margrethe Vestager.

That sounds a lot like: I had nothing to do with it.

And it's true: When the competition authorities imposed a cartel fine of more than one billion euros in a case of abuse of power for the first time in 2009, the responsible commissioner was Neelie Kroes.

And it was about x86 processors, which today can almost be assigned to industrial history.

But it would be fundamentally wrong to underestimate the importance of the judgment.

This is less because Intel is now getting the fine back.

The company obviously did not die from the sanction.

In the Intel case - in contrast to other antitrust cases pending in Luxembourg such as the Google Shopping case - it was not decisive that so many years passed by.

The allegations have general meaning

Rather, the substantive allegations of the court, which are of general importance, are decisive.

They boil down to the fact that the economic consequences of the loyalty discounts granted by Intel were "incompletely" examined, i.e. too superficially.

According to the judgment, the Commission did not provide sufficient evidence that the discounts had anti-competitive effects.

Such a harsh accusation goes to the heart of the work of every antitrust authority.

If the Commission cannot prove anti-competitive behavior, then it would be better to hold back.

During their term of office, Kroes and her predecessor Mario Monti significantly expanded the authority's economic expertise and introduced new economic tests for the analysis of competition - also as a result of Luxembourg judgements.

The verdict leaves open whether these tests in the Intel case "only" were not carried out thoroughly enough or whether they are generally reaching their limits.

Either way, Vestager will have to deal with it no matter how far back the case is.