European Competition Law provides a wide-ranging review of the European rules relating to competition: restrictive agreements, abuse of a dominant position, impact of intellectual property rights, procedure, merger control, State aid.

European Competition Law

The administrative procedure must be fully adversarial . The undertaking receiving the Statement of Objections should give its views on the conclusions which the Commission has reached . Thus the Commission must make available to the undertakings concerned all documents, whether in their favor or otherwise, save where business secrets of other undertakings, the internal documents of the Commission …

Adversarial principle

The administrative procedure must be fully adversarial . The undertaking receiving the Statement of Objections should give its views on the conclusions which the Commission has reached . Thus the Commission must make available to the undertakings concerned all documents, whether in their favor or otherwise, save where business secrets of other undertakings, the internal documents of the Commission or other confidential information are involved .

Access to the file also complies with the need to apply the principle of equality of arms , which is binding on the Commission in competition proceedings . According to that principle, the knowledge which the undertakings concerned have of the file should be the same as that of the Commission . The same goes where the undertakings may have access to the initial documents, even drawn up in their original language, which are those on which the Commission's assessment has been based . By contrast, the EU authority may refuse access to minutes of discussions with third parties where the inculpatory evidence upheld has not been determined by those discussions . Furthermore, the fact that a party did not have immediate access to the file does not constitute a violation of its procedural rights, as long as it was able to take account of the documents it contained in organizing its defense .

Access to the file is a fundamental procedural guarantee and its infringement cannot be remedied. It is impossible to equate access to the file at a later stage - in particular during the judicial proceedings - to the proper exercise of the right of access . When the request for disclosure is based on Regulation No 1049/2001 regarding public access to Commission documents, the Commission is bound by principle to assess in each particular case the content of the documents referred to in the request .

Regulation No 1/2003, Article 27: The rights of defense of the parties concerned shall be fully respected in the proceedings. - Commission Notice No 2005/C 325/07 of 13 December 2005, at pt 1: Access to the Commission file is one of the procedural guarantees intended to protect the rights of defense.

See in particular Case T-83/91 Tetra Pak v Commission [1994] ECR II-755, LawLex200400002887JBJ: the rights of defense of the undertakings concerned are guaranteed by the possibility they have to submit their views on the duration, the gravity and anticompetitive nature of the infringements.

Case T-181/10 Reagens SpA v Commission, Judgment of 20 March 2014, LawLex201400000495JBJ.

Case T-7/89 Hercules Chemicals v Commission [1991] ECR II-1711, LawLex200500003925JBJ.

Commission Notice No 2005/C 325/07 of 13 December 2005, at pt 1.

Case T-30/91 Solvay v Commission [1995] ECR II-1775, LawLex200500005008JBJ, the principle of equality of arms has been established by the Commission, See Commission Notice No 2005/C 325/07 of 13 December 2005.

Case T-175/95 BASF v Commission [1999] ECR II-1581, LawLex200400003599JBJ.

Case T-9/99 HFB and others v Commission [2002] ECR II-1487, LawLex200500004931JBJ.

Case T-191/98 DSR-Senator Lines v Commission [1999] ECR II-2531, LawLex200500004554JBJ.

Case T-671/19 Qualcomm, Inc., Judgment of 18 septembre 2024, LawLex202400006537JBJ.

Case C-51/92 P Hercules Chemicals v Commission [1999] ECR I-4235, LawLex200500003913JBJ.

European Competition Law

238. Adversarial principle

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Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

238. Adversarial principle

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Les décisions de justice citées dans ce paragraphe :

Les notions juridiques connexes

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