Case C-143/26 P, Intel v Commission – the last fifth of a seventeen-year case
The Intel case has been before the Union courts since 2009 and has produced two judgments of the Court of Justice already. This appeal concerns the part of the original decision that neither of them touched.
Facts
In May 2009 the Commission fined Intel EUR 1.06 billion for a single and continuous infringement of Article 102 TFEU on the market for x86 processors, consisting of loyalty rebates to computer manufacturers and of “naked restrictions” — payments to HP, Acer and Lenovo in return for delaying, limiting or cancelling products using rival AMD’s processors. The General Court upheld the decision in 2014; the Court of Justice set that judgment aside in 2017 (Case C‑413/14 P, ECLI:EU:C:2017:632) for failing to examine the Commission’s as-efficient-competitor analysis; on remittal the General Court annulled the decision in so far as it concerned the rebates, and the Court of Justice dismissed the Commission’s appeal against that annulment in October 2024 (Case C‑240/22 P, ECLI:EU:C:2024:915). The naked restrictions had never been annulled. By Decision C(2023) 5914 of 22 September 2023 the Commission re-adopted its findings on them alone and fined Intel EUR 376 million. On 10 December 2025 the General Court (Second Chamber) upheld the finding of infringement but, in the exercise of its unlimited jurisdiction, reduced the fine to EUR 237 million (Case T‑1129/23, ECLI:EU:T:2025:1091). Intel appeals on two grounds.
Grounds of Appeal
According to the Official Journal notice, the appellant asks the Court to set aside the judgment, annul the 2023 decision, annul or substantially reduce the fine, or in the alternative refer the case back, and in any event to order the Commission to pay the costs of both proceedings.
The appellant relies on two grounds of appeal.
By the first ground of appeal, which is divided into three parts, the appellant claims that the judgment under appeal erred in law by its mischaracterization and treatment of the relevant infringement.
In the first part of the first ground of appeal, the appellant claims that the judgment under appeal erred in law by rejecting the second part of the first plea of Intel’s application to the General Court in Case T-1129/23.
In the second part of the first ground of appeal, the appellant claims that the judgment under appeal erred in law by rejecting the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and eight parts of the first plea of Intel’s application to the General Court in Case T-1129/23.
In the third part of the first ground of appeal, the appellant claims that, in consequence of its errs, the General Court erred in law in not annulling the contested decision and in its setting of a disproportionate fine.
By the second ground of appeal, the appellant claims that the judgment under appeal erred in law by not respecting Intel’s rights of defence or complying with the principles of procedural fairness.
Sources
OJ notice C/2026/2218 (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Judgment under appeal, T‑1129/23 (ECLI:EU:T:2025:1091) · CURIA press release No 153/25 · Intel v Commission, C‑413/14 P (ECLI:EU:C:2017:632) · Commission v Intel, C‑240/22 P (ECLI:EU:C:2024:915)
Comment
The notice tells the reader almost nothing — the grounds are identified by the numbers of the pleas they repeat, not by their content — so the appeal has to be read through the General Court’s judgment, whose headnote names the issues: the “‘naked’ restrictions”, the consequences of the annulment of the 2009 decision, “the nature of the infringement” and “the amount of the fine”. The “mischaracterization and treatment of the relevant infringement” in the first ground is Intel’s long-standing argument that the naked restrictions were charged in 2009 as elements of one single and continuous infringement together with the rebates, and that once the rebates fell away the Commission could not simply re-describe what remained as a freestanding abuse and fine it as such. The General Court’s answer was that it could; the Court of Justice will have to say whether an infringement finding that survives partial annulment keeps its legal character or has to be re-established from the ground up.
On the merits of the conduct itself Intel’s prospects look thin. The naked restrictions were the least contested part of the 2009 decision: unlike the rebates, they involved no pricing and no question of an as-efficient competitor, only direct payments to delay or drop a rival’s products. Nothing in the 2017 or 2024 judgments cast doubt on them, and the General Court in December upheld the finding of infringement without qualification. The live question is the fine. The General Court cut the Commission’s EUR 376 million to EUR 237 million, and the third part of the first ground says the result is still disproportionate — an argument the Court of Justice rarely entertains, since the setting of a fine is the General Court’s to make and is reviewed only for error of law.
That leaves the second ground, on the rights of the defence, which is where re-adoption cases have sometimes turned. A decision taken in 2023 on conduct from 2002 to 2007, on the basis of a file assembled for a different theory of harm, invites the argument that the undertaking was never properly heard on the case as finally framed. Whether the Commission’s re-adoption procedure gave Intel that hearing is a question of fact the General Court examined; the appeal can succeed only if the Court finds it applied the wrong standard.
The case is a monument to how long Article 102 litigation can run: seventeen years, two trips to the Court of Justice, a fine that has gone from EUR 1.06 billion to EUR 237 million and may yet move again. The appeal will settle whether the Commission may salvage the unannulled part of a decision the courts have otherwise dismantled — a question that matters to every long-running case in which one theory of harm survives and another does not.