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EU Competition Law: Single and Continuous Infringement under Article 101 TFEU—tests, case law, bid‑rigging duration, evidential burden, limitation, fines and annulment

Published by a LexisNexis Competition expert

Practice notes

The notion of ‘single and continuous infringement’ (SCI) allows the European Commission (Commission), and national competition authorities more broadly, to treat a chain of breaches of Article 101 TFEU as one and the same cartel conduct, on the basis that they form part of a unified overall scheme...

Rationale behind the SCI concept

When a long-running and intricate cartel is under scrutiny, its reach, shape and participants can vary over time. This creates, among other things, the following challenges for the Commission:

a heavier evidential burden, because the Commission would have to establish and substantiate:
- that there were multiple discrete anti-competitive agreements and/or concerted practices, and
- which undertakings took part in each instance
a possible limitation issue in relation to the more historic of those separate anti-competitive agreements and/or concerted practices

To tackle these concerns, the Commission has embraced the SCI approach, which the EU Courts have endorsed. The concept was first seen in Europe in the 1986 Polypropylene decision...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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