It is well established that agreements and clauses infringing competition law are null, void, and unenforceable. But does that nullity have a knock-on effect? For instance, may parties invoke the nullity of an agreement based on a cartelised benchmark against a contracting partner that was never involved in the cartel?

That question was at the heart of the ECJ's judgment of 3 September 2026 (C-60/25 - SR v FT SpA) in an Italian case concerning a mortgage loan with a variable interest rate linked to Euribor.

By way of background, the European Commission fined a number of banks in 2013 and 2016 for participating in the Euribor cartel, which concerned the manipulation of the Euribor rate used in the pricing of euro interest rate derivatives. A borrower had concluded a mortgage loan agreement with a bank that was not involved in that cartel. After the initial fixed rate period, the interest rate under the loan was linked to Euribor. The borrower argued that because Euribor had been tainted by collusion, the variable interest rate clause should be considered void.

The ECJ disagreed. According to the Court, a competition law infringement decision affects the validity of agreements only within the limits of the infringement's material, personal, temporal and territorial scope. The resulting nullity does not extend to agreements that were not part of the infringement or that do not implement or give effect to it, such as, in the case at hand, an agreement relating to a different market and involving parties that did not participate in the cartel.

The judgment confirms that the nullity sanction under EU competition law does not automatically extend to separate agreements that are only indirectly connected to an infringement. In other words, competition law nullity does not necessarily trigger a knock-on effect. Parties affected in such circumstances may therefore not be able to invoke nullity against their contracting partner, although claims for indirect damages against the cartelists may remain available.

💬 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬? Feel free to reach out to our competition team or your usual contact person at 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭.