Order — ECLI:EU:C:2018:426
Date: 2018-06-12
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Vice-President
Subject matter: Competition;Agreements, decisions and concerted practices
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded;Application for interim measures
Origin: France

Summary — Order of the Vice-President of the Court, 12 June 2018 1. Application for interim measures — Suspension of operation of a measure — Interim measures — Conditions for granting — Prima facie case — Urgency — Serious and irreparable damage — Cumulative nature — Balancing of all the interests involved — Order of examination and method of verification — Discretion of the court hearing the application for interim relief (Arts 256(1) TFEU, 278 TFEU and 279 TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 160(3); Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Art. 156(4)) 2. Application for interim measures — Suspension of operation of a measure — Interim measures — Conditions for granting — Urgency — Serious and irreparable damage — Assessment in litigation on the protection of confidential information — Condition of prima facie case not satisfied — No urgency (Arts 278 TFEU and 279 TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 160(3)) 3. Competition — Administrative procedure — Professional secrecy — Establishing whether information is covered by professional secrecy — Historic information — Not included — Information which cannot be regarded as secret or confidential (Arts 101 TFEU and 339 TFEU) 4. Application for interim measures — Suspension of operation of a measure — Interim measures — Conditions for granting — Serious and irreparable damage — Risk of fundamental rights being undermined — Risk not in itself constituting serious damage (Arts 278 TFEU and 279 TFEU; Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, Art. 160(3)) 1. See the text of the decision. (see paras 14, 23) 2. On an application for interim measures, where it was necessary to assess whether it was urgent to order interim measures in order to prevent the disclosure of material alleged to be confidential, that assessment overlaps, to an extent, the examination of whether there is a prima facie case that the information is confidential, as claimed by the party seeking those measures. In that regard, it is only when, first, the applicant for interim measures alleges that the information whose publication he wishes provisionally to prevent constitutes business secrets or is covered by professional secrecy and, second, that allegation satisfies the condition that there is a prima facie case, that the judge hearing an application for interim measures is in principle required, when examining the condition of urgency, to start from the premiss that the information constitutes business secrets or is covered by professional secrecy. Therefore, it is insufficient, for the purposes of being granted interim measures, to have claimed that the information which is to be disclosed is confidential where such a claim does not satisfy the condition relating to a prima facie case. (see paras 15, 21, 22) 3. See the text of the decision. (see para. 26) 4. On an application for interim measures, the argument that harm is, by definition, serious and irreparable, since it falls within the scope of fundamental freedoms cannot be accepted since it is insufficient to allege infringement of fundamental rights in the abstract for the purpose of establishing that the harm which could result would necessarily be serious and irreparable. (see para. 36)