LUXEMBOURG, Sept 18 (Reuters) - The European Union's top court upheld a 90 million euro ($101.6 million) fine for the continent's biggest car manufacturer Volkswagen for unfair sales practices on Thursday.
The European Court of Justice dismissed Volkswagen's appeal and ordered each side to pay costs.
The European Commission had orignally fined Volkswagen 102 million euros in 1998 for restricting Italian distributors from selling its cars to German and Austrian customers. At the time, the fine was then the largest levied on a single company.
The European Court of First Instance reduced the fine to 90 million euros in 2000. Since then, Volkswagen's fine has been dwarfed by penalties applied in other cases -- in 2001, a group of vitamin manufacturers were fined 855 million euros.