Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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1. Competition ° Administrative procedure ° Observance of the rights of the defence ° Access to the file ° Limits

(Council Regulation No 17; Commission Regulation No 99/63)

2. Appeals ° Jurisdiction of the Court ° Review, on grounds of fairness, of assessment by the Court of First Instance of amounts of fines imposed on undertakings ° Excluded

Summary

1. In the context of proceedings aimed at establishing infringements of the rules on competition in the Treaty, observance of the rights of the defence requires, inter alia, that the undertaking concerned must have been enabled to express its views effectively on the documents used by the Commission to support its allegation of an infringement.

The Commission may, however, justifiably refuse to communicate to undertakings under investigation its own purely internal documents, confidential correspondence with the Member States and published documents and studies, which are, by definition, accessible to them.

The Commission may also refuse access to documents which third-party undertakings have submitted, subject to a confidentiality proviso, in the context of correspondence or of a request for information. Since an undertaking holding a dominant position on the market might adopt retaliatory measures against competitors, suppliers or customers who have collaborated in the investigation carried out by the Commission, third-party undertakings which submit documents to the Commission in the course of its investigations and consider that reprisals might be taken against them as a result can do so only if they know that account will be taken of their request for confidentiality.

Finally, reports on inspections carried out in third-party undertakings, being documents capable of providing evidence of infringements by third parties, may obviously not be disclosed.

2. It is not for the Court of Justice, when ruling on questions of law in the context of an appeal, to substitute, on grounds of fairness, its own assessment for that of the Court of First Instance exercising its unlimited jurisdiction to rule on the amount of fines imposed on undertakings for infringements of Community law.