Brussels, 12/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - The General Court of the EU decided on Tuesday 12 May that documents exchanged between the Commission and a national competition authority in proceedings concerning an infringement of the competition rules should not, in principle, be accessible to the public (case T-623/13).
The Spanish professional association of traders in steel products, UHAE, had challenged the Commission's refusal to allow it access to all the Spanish competition authority (CNC) documents in an investigation on anticompetitive practices.
On the basis of Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to documents, the Court concluded that disclosure of documents submitted by a national competition authority as part of infringement proceedings, in principle, undermines the protection of the commercial interests of the companies concerned and protection of the purposes of the investigation activities of the national competition authority. This presumption applies independently of whether the request for access concerns an investigation procedure that is already closed or one that is pending, since the European regulation applicable provides for exemptions to public access to documents for a period of at least 30 years. The Court adds that the effectiveness of the mechanism for the exchange of information between public competition authorities requires that the information exchanged remain confidential. (Mathieu Bion)