Luxembourg, January 21, 2026 — The EU General Court has dismissed an action brought by Lantmännen ek för and its subsidiary Lantmännen Biorefineries AB seeking annulment of a European Commission decision finding they infringed Article 101 TFEU and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement in the European ethanol benchmarks case.
The applicants had asked the Court to annul Commission Decision C(2023) 8320 final of 7 December 2023, in which the Commission found they participated in a single and continuous infringement aimed at influencing, in a coordinated manner, wholesale price formation on the European ethanol market, and imposed a fine of €47.718 million.
The challenge focused on procedural and fundamental rights arguments linked to the Commission’s staggered “hybrid” approach, under which the Commission first adopted a settlement decision against Abengoa in December 2021—imposing a €20 million fine—and later adopted the contested decision against the applicants at the end of the ordinary procedure. Lantmännen argued that using a staggered hybrid procedure with only one settling party breached the presumption of innocence and undermined the Commission’s duty of impartiality.
The General Court rejected both pleas. It held that EU law does not preclude the Commission from using a hybrid approach and that such a procedure does not, in itself, breach the presumption of innocence. The Court found the Commission had taken sufficient drafting precautions in the Abengoa settlement decision, including explicit statements that it did not establish the liability of other parties to the investigation, and concluded that the references to non-settling parties were objectively necessary to describe Abengoa’s conduct without amounting to a premature declaration of the applicants’ guilt.
On impartiality, the Court found the applicants had not established legitimate doubts about the Commission’s objective impartiality and noted that the adoption of the settlement decision did not determine the outcome of the ordinary procedure. The Court dismissed the action in full and ordered the applicants to bear their own costs and pay those incurred by the Commission.
