The European Commission has decided to increase transparency for companies, their legal advisers and all the business circles concerned, and to improve the information available to them by adopting ne…
The European Commission has decided to increase transparency for companies, their legal advisers and all the business circles concerned, and to improve the information available to them by adopting new internal rules on access to file under Articles 85 and 86 of the EC Treaty, Articles 65 and 66 of the ECSC Treaty, and the Merger Regulation (Council Regulation No. 4064/89 of 21 December 1989). The intention is to enable firms to defend themselves properly, while reconciling the rights of the defence with the need to protect sensitive information and the public interest in seeing infringements of the competition rules brought to an end. Access to the file is an important element in the administrative proceedings in all disputed competition cases. The Commission has now systematised and clarified its practice in this respect in the light of the case-law of the Community lawcourts, and particularly the soda-ash judgments (delivered by the Court of First Instance on 29 June 1995 in Case T-30/91 Solvay v Commission, T-36/91 ICI v Commission and T-37/91 ICI v Commission). The notice, which will be published shortly in the Official Journal, is essentially concerned with two aspects of particular importance, namely the extent of the right of access to the file and the practical procedures for its exercise. The main purpose of the notice is to provide a better objective definition of the categories of document which may or may not be consulted, in order to avoid giving the impression that the papers to which access will be allowed in a particular case have been selected on a more or less arbitrary basis by the Commission itself and that documents which would be useful for the defence of the firm under investigation may have been removed. The new rules clarify a number of vital points in order to make certain that the rights of parties to competition proceedings are respected. The Commission believes that these new procedures provide a pragmatic and effective solution to most of the problems encountered in connection with access to files, while ensuring that firms are able to exercise their right to be heard.