ABUSE OF A DOMINANT POSITION - Advocatennet

II. Exclusionary abuses: analytical framework (3)
- Michelin I -
• A dominant company’s “special responsibility”
– 57. “ A finding that an undertaking has a dominant position is not in itself a recrimination but
simply means that, irrespective of the reasons for which it has such a dominant position , the
undertaking concerned has a special responsibility not to allow its conduct to impair genuine
undistorted competition on the common market.”
• Assessment a dominant company’s conduct in light of “all the
circumstances”
– 73. “In deciding whether Michelin abused its dominant position in applying its discount
system it is therefore necessary to consider all the circumstances, particularly the criteria and
rules for the grant of the discount, and to investigate whether, in providing an advantage not
based on any economic service justifying it, the discount tends to remove or restrict the
buyer's freedom to choose his sources of supply, to bar competitors from access to the
market, to apply dissimilar conditions to equivalent transactions with other trading parties or
to strengthen the dominant position by distorting competition. ”
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