Court of Justice 19 March 2026, C-762/24 (Opinion of Advocate General Rantos delivered on 19 March 2026.)

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Advocate General Rantos proposes that the Court of Justice dismiss the appeal brought by Conserve Italia and Conserves France against a fine for participating in a canned vegetable cartel, affirming that a cooperative society active on the market is correctly classified as an 'undertaking' for the purpose of calculating the 10% statutory ceiling under Article 23(2) of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003. The Opinion argues that the lex specialis for associations of undertakings in the third subparagraph of Article 23(2) is inapplicable where the entity carries on an independent economic activity and its own turnover adequately reflects its market power. Furthermore, the Advocate General maintains that the specific mutualist structure of a cooperative does not exempt it from standard competition law penalties or necessitate a reduction of the turnover base to only those products covered by the infringement.AI