This week, the European Court of Justice (CJEU)
upheld the General Court's judgment and European
Commission's decision to fine the Lithuanian national railway
company for abusing its dominant position.
The abuse: dismantling 19km of track, thereby making it unusable
for the dominant railway company, Lietuvos gele~inkeliai
AB (LG), as well as for the complainant.
The case is interesting for a number of reasons, and I've
written more about it here:
European Union: Abuse of dominance and Article 102 of the TFEU.
However, this week's key learnings from the CJEU judgement
are as follows:
Destruction does not equal Refusal of
Access. By destructing an asset, the dominant company
itself loses access to the benefit of its asset. This is in
contrast to merely refusing access, whereby the dominant company
reserves the asset to itself, deriving an immediate benefit. The
present case should therefore not be reviewed as “problem of
access” abuse.
