Antitrust fines, which the European Commission imposes on mostly very large corporations, are basically something fine for the EU states as well.

Because the fines flow directly into the EU budget.

This does not increase the size of the budget.

Rather, they reduce the contributions that member states pay proportionately into the budget.

It is no longer a question of peanuts, because the Commission now regularly calls for billions in cartel fines.

She achieved the previous record in 2018 in the Android proceedings against Google, in which around 4.3 billion euros were due for the Internet company.

In two other proceedings, Google had to pay another 3.9 billion euros.

The amounts should not be lower, since the amount of the fines is based on the amount of annual sales.

Werner Mussler

Business correspondent in Brussels.

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Of course, the reverse is also true: if the responsible EU courts – as has happened several times in recent years – overturn the decisions of the competition authority, the EU must also pay back the fines that Brussels has long since received.

The resulting gap must be closed from the current budget.

Either funds are left over there, or a supplementary budget will be due.

"One way or another, the member states have to bleed," says CSU MEP Markus Ferber.

"The fact that the European Commission regularly loses high-profile competition cases is not only embarrassing, but is also slowly becoming a budgetary risk," criticizes Ferber.

"Incomplete" checked

The CSU politician has requested information from Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager about the specific scope of other budgetary risks resulting from cases lost in court.

The reason for Ferber was the judgment of the competent EU court in January of this year.

The judges conceded what was then a spectacular Commission decision from 2009. At that time, the EU authority had imposed a cartel fine of 1.06 billion euros on the chip manufacturer Intel.

Intel sued against it - and won (almost 13 years later) in court.

The judges declared the fine void in its entirety.

As the main justification, they cited the finding that the Commission had only "incompletely" examined the economic consequences of the company's behavior that it had objected to.

After the verdict, Intel not only reclaimed the fine, but also 593 million euros in interest.

The company cites a different ruling by the EU court, in which the judges consider an interest rate for clawbacks that is composed of the refinancing rate of the European Central Bank and a premium of 3.5 percent to be appropriate.

"At that rate, claims for repayment from the Commission quickly add up to significant amounts," says Ferber.

In her reply, the commissioner announces that she intends to contest Intel's additional request.

So the litigation continues.

At the same time, Vestager admits that in two comparable cases - British Airways and Printeos - further claims based on interest payments could come to the Commission.

It is apparently still unclear whether the American chip manufacturer Qualcomm will also assert claims that go beyond the repayment of the fine imposed.

In June, the commission also fell flat in the Qualcomm court case.

The EU court had declared the fine of 997 million euros imposed in 2018 to be void.

The Commission can still challenge this judgment before the European Court of Justice.