Matsushita v Council: ECJ 13 Oct 1993

(Judgment) here it is found that, for sales on its domestic market, a manufacturer assigns tasks which are normally the responsibility of an internal sales department to distribution companies which are under the manufacturer’ s economic control and form a single economic entity with it, it is justified for the institutions to rely, in determining the normal value, on the prices paid by the first independent buyer to those related sales companies, since those prices may properly be regarded as the prices actually paid or payable in the ordinary course of trade within the meaning of Article 2(3)(a) of Regulation No 2423/88, the basic anti-dumping regulation. In such a case, there is no ground for applying Article 2(3)(b) of that regulation, which comes into play only where there are no sales of the like product in the ordinary course of trade.
Furthermore, the fact that a number of sales functions are performed by the manufacturer itself does not affect the existence of a single economic entity, particularly where those functions are merely complementary to those performed by the related sales companies.

Citations:

C-104/90, [1993] EUECJ C-104/90

Links:

Bailii

Jurisdiction:

European

Commercial

Updated: 01 June 2022; Ref: scu.160477