BRUSSELS: Intel has requested 593 million euros ($624 million) in interest from the European Commission, five months after convincing Europe’s second-highest court to drop a 1.06 billion-euro EU antitrust fine, according to an EU filing on Monday.
Last year’s landmark ruling by Europe’s top court ordering the EU executive to pay default interest on reimbursed fines in annulled antitrust cases paved the way for such damage claims.
According to the judges, late payment of interest will result in interest as well.
In its application to the Luxembourg-based General Court, Intel stated that the Commission, which serves as the European Union’s competition watchdog, had refused to reimburse the company for the default interest.
Following Intel’s court defeat in January of this year, the Commission returned $1.2 billion to the company.Intel stated that its claim is based on an interest rate equivalent to the European Central Bank’s refinancing rate of 1.25 percent beginning in May 2009, which should be increased to 3.5 percent from August 2009 to February this year, when the EU repaid the company fine, minus 38 million euros in interest paid to Intel by the Commission
