The Michelin group holds the principal position amongst tyre manufacturers in the Community; on the world market, only Goodyear is larger. Michelin introduced the radial tyre and is still the world's leading manufacturer of radial tyres, possessing a special degree of know-how. Owing to its large-scale financial resources it has a clear lead in specialized investment in this field. The range of tyres offered by Michelin in the Netherlands is larger than that of any other manufacturer. Even though several of its competitors have managed to catch up with Michelin to some extent, users continue to show some preference for Michelin products. The fact that an exact idea may be gained of a tyre's reliability and cost price only after several years' experience with it allows well-established makes to maintain a strong position in the long term.

Michelin NV holds by far the largest share of the Netherlands market in new replacement tyres for lorries and buses. Between 1975 and 1980 the figures for its share of share of new tyres sold were from 57 to 65%, which take no account of parallel tyre imports, which are difficult to establish, but which are estimated at several thousands and consist mainly of Michelin tyres. The market shares of the five principal competing makes are between 4 and 8%. In total 25 to 28% of heavy-duty tyres in competition with Michelin tyres on the Netherlands replacement market come from other Member States of the Community. Whereas the grossprices of Michelin tyres are comparable to the prices charged for the tyres of its main competitors, a comparison shows that the net purchase prices charged to Michelin tyre dealers are, after deduction of the discount, 10 to 15% higher than those charged for other makes.

Michelin NV's share of the market in retreads grew from 6% in 1975 to 18% in 1979. At the end of 1977 Michelin NV acquired the major retreading undertaking Tyresoles (which it disposed of again in April 1980). This acquisition allowed Michelin to obtain a further share of 20% of retreads fitted in the Netherlands and to control virtually one third of the Netherlands market in heavy-duty retreads at that time.

Michelin NV holds the principal position on the Netherlands market in new replacement tyres for cars, with a market share of about one third. Its main competitors have market shares ranging between 5 and 13%.

Michelin NV operates a substantial commercial and technical service. On their own initiative its representatives regularly visit all the tyre dealers and without informing the dealers also visit the users of heavy-vehicle tyres in order to promote sales of Michelin tyres. During their visits the representatives give technical advice to the users and carry out on-the-spot technical checks of tyres and the state of vehicles. They accept orders which they pass on to the dealer and are instructed to draw up an inventory of competing makes of tyres which they see being used. The purpose of the visits is to obtain market knowledge of direct use to the manufacturer. In addition, Michelin NV operates a specialized technical service upon which any user of Michelin tyres may call in order to resolve complicated technical problems.

All those factors give Michelin NV such complete freedom of action vis-à-vis its competitors and customers that it can prevent effective competition on the relevant market and adversely affect trade between Member States.

Consequently Michelin NV enjoys a dominant position on the relevant market.

The discount system was capable of affecting trade between Member States since it restricted the dealers' freedom to make purchases. The chances of the other tyre manufacturers, many of which are established within the common market, of penetrating the Netherlands market were diminished. In so far as the purpose of the conduct in question was to maintain Michelin NV's market share and to limit the other manufacturers' shares of the Netherlands market, it was liable to restrict trade between Member States.

By making the grant of an extra annual bonus for heavy- and light-vehicle tyres dependent on the attainment of a specific target for light-vehicle tyres Michelin NV put its competitors at a disadvantage as regards their scope for selling light-vehicle tyres and for a time thereby impeded sales of light-vehicle tyres intended for the Netherlands market and originating mainly in other countries of the Community.

The decision states that it is necessary to impose a fine on Michelin NV because it infringed, at least negligently, Article 86. It must have been aware that it was able to impede the access of other makes of new heavy-vehicle tyres to the Netherlands market and that its discount system impeded such access. Judgments given by the Court since 1973 have made it clear that a discount system whereby an undertaking in a dominant position attempts, by means of financial incentives, to prevent supplies being obtained from competitors is contrary to Article 86. Michelin NV must be aware that the system it applied, which might be regarded as a variant of a system of loyalty rebates, had the same restrictive effects on competition as a loyalty rebate and it must also have been aware of the discriminatory effects of its policy. In view of the position which the Michelin group occupies on the European market Michelin NV may be expected to follow developments in European law attentively and adjust its policy accordingly.

To establish the duration of the infringement, the period 1975 to 1980 was taken into account as regards the application of the discount system and 1977 as regards the extra bonus granted on purchases of car tyres.

The infringement must be regarded as serious because the commercial policy pursued by Michelin NV significantly distorted competition on the Netherlands market over a long period by leaving dealers no freedom of decision as regards purchasing, creating discrimination and strengthening its dominant position. On the other hand credit should be given to Michelin NV for the changes and relaxation of its policy effected in 1978 and 1979. The Commission also regards the grant of the extra bonus in 1977 as a serious infringement.

The Commission concludes that in view of Michelin NV's total turnover, which amounted to some HFL 455 million in 1980, as well as the gravity of the infringement at issue and the intensity with which the discount system was applied, a total fine of 680000 ECU should be imposed on Michelin NV in respect of the two infringements established.

Michelin NV contends that the Commission defined the market as being that for new replacement tyres for lorries, buses and similar vehicles, which is artificial and arbitrary. The market is composed of a highly diversified mixture of dimensions and types of tyre which are not interchangeable and does not include retreads, although these are interchangeable with new tyres of the same dimensions and type. The definition of the relevant product market is therefore both too wide and too narrow.

As far as interćhangeability is concerned, it is as absurd to compare tyres for three-and-a-half tonne lorries to tyres for 35 tonne lorries as it would be to regard a set of shoe-sizes selected at random from all the possible shoe-sizes as constituting one single market. As far as haulage conditions are concerned, each tyreprofile, like those of road tyres or tyres for use on sites or quarries, meets specific needs which cannot be met by another type of tyre.

In assessing whether an undertaking occupies a dominant position on the market for a given product, only the choices open to the person using the product should be considered and not those of the intermediaries marketing it. A dealer's views on the interchangeability of a product are irrelevant. From the dealer's point of view — the level which the Commission took as its basis — there are no grounds for separating the market in tyres for lorries, buses and similar vehicles from the tyre market in general. At that level all products are by definition interchangeable with certain limits and heavy-vehicle tyres are simply one of the products in the product range.

There is no fixed practice in the tyre industry and no objective test for distinguishing tyres for lorries, buses and similar vehicles from other categories of tyre.

The Commission's reasoning in its decision is based on a fundamental contradiction inasmuch as the Commission alternately puts itself in the shoes of the consumer and the dealer.

It is arbitrary and illogical not to include retreads in the definition of the relevant market since they are perfectly capable of satisfying the same needs. Many letters written by retread users and produced by the applicant prove that the quality of retreads is comparable in all respects to that of new tyres and that there are no limits on their use, for example, on the front axles of vehicles or on passenger vehicles. The prejudices still shown by some users and dealers towards the use of retreads are not sufficient for them to be classified in a market of their own. In this connection regard must be had to objective characteristics and not to subjective perceptions. As a matter of fact the use of retreads is on the increase and not all users are prejudiced against them.

Every retread that is in use takes the place of a new tyre and is sold in the same way as a new tyre through the intermediary of dealers. It is not possible to distinguish between the product and the service. There is no difference between retread tyres sold in exchange for a carcass and tyres that are retreaded carcass included. In their statistics the trade organizations make no such distinction. The limitations on the production of retreads are not a ground for excluding them from the relevant market, especially since those limitations are not very great, as any new tyre may be retreaded two or three times.

The Commission contends first of all that it is paradoxical for the undertaking concerned to claim that the relevant market is too wide since such a claim cannot refute the existence of a dominant position.

The applicant seeks to distinguish markets corresponding to micro-categories of tyres. For this purpose it considers only elasticity of demand, entirely ignoring elasticity of supply relating in particular to the special characteristics of production and the extent to which various products are technically complementary at manufacturing level. It is necessary to have regard to a number of criteria in order to define the relevant market. Besides elasticity of supply and demand the perceptions of traders should also be considered. The alleged incoherence of the Commission's definition of the market merely reflects a necessarily complex approach without which economically and legally correct conclusions would not be possible.

The extent to which products are interchangeable makes it possible to determine the external limits of a market — that in tyres — within which submarkets must be distinguished depending on the structure of demand. This is characterized by the fact that unlike buyers of car tyres buyers of heavy-vehicle tyres are most frequently trade purchasers. Lorry and bus tyres are bought by undertakings which require them regularly and in large quantities, that is to say by experienced buyers. This affects the dealer's role: a dealer in heavy-vehicle tyres is expected to give technical advice and provide a specialized after-sales service not only for the tyres themselves but also for the wheels.

On the other hand, it is not possible to distinguish within a technically homogeneous product range different markets according to dimensions, diameter or circumference. Products of different dimensions, diameters or circumferences, manufactured in identical plant belong to the same market because of elasticity of supply.

As regards the exclusion of retreads from the relevant market, the Commission stresses that 80 to 95% of retread tyres are retreaded to the order of haulage undertakings and remain their property. The market in question is therefore a service market. Furthermore, users consider retreads less safe and in practice they are used only on rear axles. Irrespective of the objective facts, retreads are not a genuine alternative as far as dealers are concerned. This opinion of users is reflected in the lower price of retreads. Even if mileage is taken into account, the price of retreads tends to be lower than the price of new tyres. In a price economy in which the true state of affairs is determined by the market or in other words by supply and demand, it is pointless to take objective characteristics into account.

Since all retreads are made from new tyres, a market share which included retreads would not give a true picture of the market position. If tyres were retreaded three times, even a monopolist manufacturing 100% of all new tyres would, according to the applicant, have a market share of only 25%. Secondary competition must be disregarded where it is a question of assessing the position of a manufacturer of primary products from which the secondary product is derived. Even if all retreads were sold freely and were a factor in competition, Michelin NV would still occupy the key position owing to its dominance of the market in new tyres.

To this Michelin NV replies that the criterion of interchangeability or the capacity to serve as a substitute is the key concept in defining the market and that the argument relating to elasticity of supply, for which in fact the Commission adduces no. evidence and which it did not use in its decision, is untenable. The method of manufacture is basically the same, regardless of tyre size, so that this idea does not allow lorry and bus tyres to be classified in a market separate from the tyre market in general.

As regards the role which the dealer has to play, Michelin NV stresses that users of van tyres are to a considerable extent also trade users and that users of car tyres, particularly commercial travellers and taxi-drivers, are quite capable of making an informed and expert choice of tyre and are just as demanding as customers for heavy-vehicle tyres.

The Commission's reply to that point is that the structure of demand justifies both the exclusion of original equipment tyres — which the applicant has not challenged — and the distinction drawn between heavy- and light-vehicle tyres on the replacement market. Commercial travellers and taxi-drivers cannot change the general trends in demand on the market for light-vehicle tyres, whilst vantyre users, although usually undertakings, are not haulage contractors and therefore are not trade purchasers.

Michelin NV complains that the relevant geographical market has been restricted to the Netherlands.

The Commission is relying on a number of factors, such as technological advance, large financial resources and active research and development policies, which are far beyond the capacity of Michelin NV and apply only to the Michelin group as a whole. Such factors, relating to the whole group, may not be taken into account unless the Commission takes a much wider market, even the world market, as its basis.

The manufacturers with whom Michelin competes in the Netherlands are undertakings on a worldwide scale. To consider only the Netherlands market and to take into account considerations not specific to that market gives a false picture of competition in the Netherlands.

The Commission points out that this complaint concerns not so much the definition of the market as the finding that Michelin NV dominates the market. Once the geographical market has been defined it is quite normal to assess the position of an undertaking active on that market by reference to the advantages which it derives from belonging to a larger group.

The true economic position is that in selling their products on the various national markets in the Community manufacturers have generally decided to use subsidiaries operating on the national market. As far as sales to dealers are concerned, competition in the Netherlands is therefore between the manufacturers' local subsidiaries, the dealers in practice having no access to sources of supply outside the Netherlands. The area in which the objective conditions of competition are the same for all traders is therefore the Netherlands.

According to Michelin NV the Commission has misunderstood the essential features of its discount system The discount consists of a fixed component which is the same for each dealer and a variable component which is determined each year in proportion to purchases of Michelin products on the basis of an annually reviewed progressive scale which Michelin NV notified to the Commission at the beginning of the investigation in 1977. The variable component fluctuated from year to year by no more than 5%. A fraction of this component, which never exceeded a few tenths of a percentage point, was linked to the attainment of jointly agreed sales targets which were subsequently incorporated into Michelin NV's production and sales programme.

In this regard Michelin NV emphasizes in particular the very slight variation in the discounts. The maximum difference in the discounts granted to the 54 customers selected by the Commission's inspectors for the purpose of the investigation was 2 to 2.5% whereas the number of purchases of heavy-duty Michelin tyres made by those same dealers might vary from more than 13000 to 200 per year. With a few exceptions, all dealers purchasing more than 3000 tyres per year received the same maximum discount percentage during the period 1975 to 1979.

Michelin NV's discount was entirely quantitative. Until 1978 the scale used was based on total purchases of tyres of all types and thereafter on purchases of different types of tyre. However, the scale could not be automatically applied because dealers were not prepared to accept automatically lower discounts when sales declined.

The sales target was never the decisive factor in the discount, which was in payment for an objective service by the dealer to the manufacturer inasmuch as the information received by the manufacturer when fixing its targets enabled it to programme its production better and reduce costs.

No dealer has ever been deprived of all of his annual discount for any reason whatsoever. Every dealer knew from experience that in such a case he would lose only a few tenths of 1 % at the most.

The Commission has wrongly likened the discount to a loyalty rebate such as that considered by the Court in its judgment of 13 February 1979 (Case 85/76 Hoffmann-La Roche v Commission [1979] ECR 461). There are no exclusive purchasing obligations. Even customers dealing in different makes of tyre receive the same discount. The target discount has no dissuasive effect on the dealers' purchasing policy. The differences between the discounts received by different dealers are quantitative in nature, that is to say they are based on the dealer's total turnover. The grant of a discount to encourage sales by dealers is a legitimate service under Article 86. It is a reward for the service consisting in the attainment of jointly agreed sales targets irrespective of purchases of other makes of tyre. To prohibit a manufacturer from encouraging his dealers to buy more would in fact be tantamount to condemning him to lose ground.

Nor is the discount discriminatory. The differences between the rates of discount are due to the application of a scale which is based on the dealer's total purchases from Michelin NV during the previous year. In no case was the rate of discount related to a dealer's purchases of Michelin products as a preparation of his purchases of competing makes.

The charge that the rate of discount was linked to the proportion of Michelin tyres purchased by the dealer (temperature Michelin) is unjustified and not supported by any evidence. The temperature Michelin never played any part in the fixing of the discount.

In any case such slight differences cannot be due to any anticompetitive motives and do not therefore deserve consideration by the Community authorities in the application of Article 86.

The Commission's allegation that targets and discounts were never notified is unfounded as they were agreed by the dealers and Michelin NV's commercial representatives at the beginning of the year. The cases cited by the Commission to prove that this was not the case were of dealers whose sales had suddenly fallen and who claimed that they had not properly understood the terms on which the discounts were granted although these had never caused them any problems in the past. The discounts had to be notified to the dealer otherwise they would have been pointless. Each dealer who asked for written confirmation always received it.

In short Michelin NV considers that the interpretation which the Commission seeks to place in this case on Article 86 of the EEC Treaty is inconsistent with the Court's judgment of 13 February 1979 in the Hoffmann-La Roche case. In that case the Court held that loyalty rebates departed from the rules of normal competition between products or services because their purpose was to reward a promise on the part of the purchaser not to obtain his supplies from competitors. In this case, however, the conduct rewarded is not the acceptance of such an obligation but the purchase of increasing quantities of goods from the supplier in question. The Commission is objecting to the discounts in question as being incentives to purchase more.

To prohibit an undertaking in a dominant position from concerning itself with the sale of its product and from encouraging dealers to buy it is tantamount to condemning it to lose ground and penalizing it merely for occupying a dominant position. Such a penalty would be all the more unjust in this case because the undertaking concerned owes its market position to the quality of its products. Since Michelin NV constantly has to face very keen competition throughout the world, any fetters on its ability to react and adapt itself to competition would be such as to put its very existence in jeopardy.

The Commission observes first of all that the importance attached by Michelin NV in its application to the scale used for the annual bonuses does not fit in with the explanations which it provided during the administrative procedurę according to which the scale and A relevant instructions were merely a guideline for internal use which was applied flexibly in order to take account of the individual situation of each dealer. The fact that the scale was applied flexibly had no real importance or may even have been completely ineffective is confirmed by the anomalies which come to light upon a close examination of the figures provided by Michelin NV of sales of different categories of tyre and the discounts granted on them.

It is clear from the customer records that the discount was linked to a target for heavy-vehicle tyres and that the target consisted in a precise number of tyres to be purchased during the current year. Even though the variations in discount from one dealer to another and the penalizing of a dealer who failed to meet his highest target but reached a lower target were limited, their effect was far from being negligible. What is more, if the dealer did not attain the lowest target, or after 1978 the single target, he could not be sure of not losing all his annual discount because Michelin reserved the right to impose that drastic penalty. In at least one case Michelin threatened to withdraw the advance already paid on a dealer's annual bonus if he did not achieve his target for the year in question.

The contention that Michelin NV's discount was purely quantitative is contradicted by the customer records. For instance, in one case a dealer with a considerably lower total turnover than another dealer still received a higher maximum discount than the other for attaining a much lower maximum target than that set for that other dealer. This individual character of the discount system is borne out by Michelin NV's statements regarding the difficulty of reducing the discounts in the event of a decline in turnover.

Even if the penalty for not attaining the target was probably limited in most cases, the dealer was entirely at Michelin's mercy if he did not achieve the lowest target. The target and the discount were therefore important means of bringing pressure to bear.

Information received by the manufacturer in fixing the targets cannot be regarded as a service objectively rendered. If it was merely a matter of obtaining information, a simple inquiry of the dealers as to their estimated purchases in the coming year would have been sufficient. However, Michelin NV sought by means of its system artificially to encourage the dealer to adhere to his own estimates and took an active part in preparing those estimates for the purposes of fixing the targets.

In seeking to prove that its system amounted to a quantitative-discount system Michelin NV ignores the fact that its discounts were not based on a scale applying to all its trade customers, were linked to individualized targets and were applied in a way which was totally obscure as far as the dealers were concerned. Even if the customer records do not show that the proposed annual bonus was directly linked to the proportion of Michelin tyres in a dealer's total purchases, which Michelin NV representatives were required to express by the equivalent of what used to be termed the temperature Michelin, Michelin NV can hardly deny that this factor was one of the most important considerations in the individual fixing of both the discount and the target.

The discriminatory character of the discount lies in the fact that Michelin NV fixed the sales targets and discounts in a manner which was individualized and lacked transparency. Although Michelin NV claims that the annual supplementary bonus scale was the objective element in the fixing of the discounts, it has never offered to prove that in practice the facts corresponded to that scale, despite all the anomalies which the Commission has pointed out. Undertakings in comparable situations were treated differently. Likewise, undertakings in quite different situations were treated in the same way. The differences found to exist between the discounts are substantial, amounting to 2 to 5% of the annual bonus. In absolute figures, this represents thousands or tens of thousands of guilders, which are considerable sums for the undertakings involved.

Prior to a statement made at the hearing in this case in 1980, Michelin NV's policy was not to confirm officially agreed discounts; such confirmation could be obtained only by way of exception and after much insistence.

Since the targets and discounts were not confirmed in writing the dealer was left in doubt and uncertainty — not from the legal point of view but as regards the facts — because he has great problems in calculating his discount. This increased Michelin NV's freedom of action.

Michelin NV has not adduced any evidence to show that its target discount was a form of quantitative discount. Even if it was, such a system, applied by an undertaking in a dominant position, may amount to an abuse, for the attainment of an annual target by the dealer did not make possible a reduction in costs which Michelin NV would be entitled to reward. Cost reductions cannot be achieved by an end-ofyear bonus.

In its summing up the Commission emphasizes that in the Hoffmann-La Roche case the Court condemned loyalty rebates because they were not based on an economic service justifying such a benefit. Rebates are permissible only if they are restricted to passing on cost savings to the buyer. Rebates not linked to cost savings and whose object is to limit the advantage for the buyer in choosing another supplier's product may not be used by an undertaking in a dominant position. With the exception of bargain prices, an undertaking in a dominant position may lower its prices ony for all buyers in general, which means that that restriction on the dominant undertaking amounts to an obligation not to discriminate.

That prohibition may even apply to certain kinds of quantitative rebates not linked to cost savings. In this regard the Commission refers to a decision of the Bundeskartellamt of 22 October 1979 (Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb, 2/1980, p. 145) which was upheld by the Kammergericht on 28 November 1980 (Wirtschaft und Wettbewerb, 1/1981, p. 15). The discounts in this case however are, in addition, individualized and secret.

The intention is not to condemn an undertaking in a dominant position to lose ground. But once the advantage of an undertaking's technological lead and the quality of its products, to which it owes its dominant position, are eroded, it must maintain its dominant position only by better economic performance and not by exploiting the advantages it enjoys by virtue of its dominant position with the result that the dominant position is self-perpetuating.

The French Government submits that the Commission treats the application of a discount system such as that in question as an infringement per se without demonstrating that such a practice might have adverse effects on competition.

The market in replacement tyres for heavy vehicles is an open and competitive market. Michelin NV allows its dealers complete commercial freedom. There is nothing reprehensible in an undertaking's creating strong ties with its dealers. They choose to buy Michelin tyres for a variety of reasons connected with the quality, prestige and price of the product.

Michelin did not seek to strengthen its dominant position but expanded entirely by means of internal growth and by a commercial policy conforming with the law, suited to commercial tyre-users and fully in line with its long-term strategy.

According to Michelin NV, the Commission's objection to the extra bonus granted in 1977 is based on a wrong analysis of the facts. Since the bonus did not amount to a form of connected transaction within the meaning of Article 86 (d), its alleged illegality lay only in the fact that the Commission described it as an extra bonus for the purchase of lorry tyres whereas it was linked to the fulfilment of a specific service regarding car tyres. There is no justification for that discription.

The decision to grant the bonus was taken following a temporary shortage of heavy-vehicle tyres which was due to measures adopted by Michelin NV to modernize its production programme. In order to offset the adverse effects of the shortage on dealers' remuneration, Michelin NV announced, and not until September, the grant of an extra end-ofyear bonus of 0.5% for all dealers who attained the purchase target for light tyres agreed at the beginning of 1977, which was the same as for the previous year. The bonus in question was an extra discount on purchases of car tyres, consisting of an increase in the usual discount on purchases of car tyres for 1977, and was no different from the usual discount on purchases of car tyres to which the Commission had never objected.

The Commission is therefore making two errors in claiming that the sales target for light tyres was a special target and that the bonus of 0.5% was calculated on purchases of light and heavy tyres when it was calculated on the basis of total purchases of all current categories of tyres.

In its argument the Commission is confusing the bonus and the concept of connected transactions within the meaning of Article 86 (d) of the Treaty. The Commission should have abandoned the argument that the bonus amounted to an abuse within the meaning of Article 86 (d) because it did not involve making the sale to a customer of product A subject to his purchase of product B.

In accusing Michelin NV of taking advantage of the shortage of heavy-vehicle tyres to compel dealers to make an extra effort to sell car tyres, the Commission is imputing deliberate intent to Michelin NV. A measure intended merely to provide dealers affected by the shortage with extra remuneration cannot be termed an abuse. The extra bonus had no anticompetitive purpose or effect.

In reply the Commission, relying on the customer records, denies that dealers were not offered the extra bonus until September. In any case, even if it was not offered until September 1977, it would still have made it possible to influence purchases in the last quarter, which commercially is the most important part of the year in the tyre trade. The bonus was linked to a special target, at any rate to a target expressly fixed for car tyres. It was the same as, or even higher than, the annual maximum target — and in a year in which demand for car tyres was falling. Michelin NV introduced the bonus because it had foreseen a shortage of heavy-vehicle tyres on the Netherlands market due to an increase in its exports to the United States. It was therefore an addition to the discounts on heavy-vehicle tyres and was meant to compensate lower sales of such tyres.

The effect of the extra bonus system was that a dealer who did not succeed in attaining the sales target agreed for car tyres did not earn any compensation for losses due to the shortage of heavy-vehicle tyres. The profit held in prospect by the extra bonus was directly intended to stimulate the dealers' activity on quite a different market on which demand was weak. At a time when turnover in heavy-vehicle tyres was falling as a result of a shortage caused by Michelin NV itself, an extra effort on the market in car tyres was demanded from dealers if they wished to receive compensation for the consequences of that shortage. The dealers had no choice but to accept that conduct on the part of the dominant undertaking if they wished to maintain their competitive position on the market. Even if that commercial practice does not come within the letter of Article 86 (d), it is conduct which distorts competition on the market in light tyres and comes within the spirit of that provision. In any event the practice is caught by the general prohibition of abuse of a dominant position contained in Article 86. It is not a normal means of competition for an undertaking to maintain the limited degree of competition on the market in replacement tyres for heavy vehicles by attempting to strengthen its position in respect of car tyres, which constitute a different market.