An EU court has ordered that a multi-million dollar fine imposed on French building materials supplier Saint-Gobain in 2008 over a car window cartel be cut by 30%. The ruling of the General Court found that the EC, the EU's executive, had been wrong to add 60% to the initial fine imposed on the company. The Commission had said that the increase was a punishment for the company's "repeated infringement". However, the Luxembourg-based court ordered that the fine on Saint-Gobain for its part in the cartel be reduced from 880 million Euros to 715 million Euros. This was because the company "could not be held liable" for anti-competitive practices for which a subsidiary had been prosecuted in 1988. The Commission had accused Saint-Gobain of having created a cartel between 1998-2003 with Japanese company Asahi, Belgian firm Soliver and Pilkington. In 2008, the Commission had found that the companies had agreed to fix the prices of car windows which they supplied to car manufacturers, with the Saint-Gobain Group and its parent company facing the highest fine. However, the Court's March ruling upheld the Commission's linking of the cartel to a separate antitrust decision against Saint Gobain in 1984, on the grounds that the company responsible for that infringement did have direct links to Saint-Gobain.
