Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2012:651
Date: 2012-12-06
Language of the case: English
Court formation: First Chamber
Subject matter: Competition;Provisions governing the Institutions;Access to documents
Procedure: Action for annulment - successful
Origin: Greece

summary table which it had submitted in response to a request for information made in the order of 8 November 2011 in order to identify the information falling within the scope of each of the three exceptions invoked in the first and second contested decisions and the information to which the partial access evoked in the rejoinder could have been allowed. That information, submitted following the examination of two of the documents taken into consideration in order to adopt the first contested decision, and six of the documents taken into consideration in order to adopt the second contested decision were intended to enable the applicant to understand the nature of the information which the Commission wished to protect without enabling it to gain specific knowledge thereof. 33 The applicant claims that the Court should: – annul the first and second contested decisions; – order the Commission to pay the costs and other expenses incurred by the applicant in respect of the action, even if the action is dismissed. 34 The Commission contends that the Court should: – dismiss the action; – order the applicant to pay the costs. Law Admissibility of the action as regards the first contested decision 35 The Commission submits that the action must be declared inadmissible in so far as it concerns the first contested decision. As a result of the ‘notification’ to the applicant, carried out by e-mail on the date of that decision’s adoption, that is, 27 January 2010, the two-month period for bringing an action for annulment came to an end, taking into account the extension on account of distance, on 6 April 2010. The action is therefore out of time, since it was brought the following day, that is, 7 April 2010. 36 In that regard, it should be borne in mind that, under the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU, an action for annulment must be brought within two months of the publication of the contested measure, or of its notification to the plaintiff, or, in the absence thereof, of the day on which it came to the knowledge of the latter, as the case may be. It is also apparent from the third paragraph of Article 297(2) TFEU that decisions which specify to whom they are addressed, as is the situation in the present case, are to be notified to those to whom they are addressed and are to take effect upon such notification. In addition, under Article 102(2) of the Rules of Procedure, the prescribed time‑limit for commencing proceedings must be extended on account of distance by a single period of 10 days. 37 According to settled case-law, that time-limit for bringing an action for annulment is a matter of public policy, since it was established in order to ensure that legal positions are clear and certain and to avoid any discrimination or arbitrary treatment in the administration of justice, and the judicature of the European Union must ascertain of its own motion whether it has been observed (Case C‑246/95 Coen [1997] ECR I‑403, paragraph 21, and Joined Cases T‑121/96 and T‑151/96 Mutual Aid Administration Services v Commission [1997] ECR II‑1355, paragraphs 38 and 39). 38 In addition, in the interests of the parties and third parties who might be concerned, the principle of legal certainty requires the points in time at which any prescribed period begins and ceases to run to be clearly defined and strictly complied with (Case 44/81 Germany and Bundesanstalt für Arbeit v Commission [1982] ECR I‑1855, paragraph 16, and Case T‑54/90 Lacroix v Commission [1991] ECR II‑749, paragraph 29). 39 Furthermore, it is the responsibility of the party alleging that an action is out of time, in view of the time-limits fixed by the sixth paragraph of Article 263 TFEU and Article 102(2) of the Rules of Procedure, to provide evidence of the date on which the event causing time to begin to run occurred (Joined Cases T‑70/92 and T‑71/92 Florimex and VGB v Commission [1997] ECR II‑693, paragraph 74, and order in Case T‑263/97 GAL Penisola Sorrentina v Commission [2000] ECR II‑2041, paragraph 47). 40 In the present case, it should be noted that the term ‘notification’, used to describe the transmission by electronic means of the first contested decision, has a double meaning. That term covers both the action of bringing to the recipient’s attention a decision which concerns that recipient and the actual document used for that purpose, which inter alia allows evidence to be provided of the date on which that action took place. 41 The first aspect, that is, the Commission’s having brought the first contested decision to the applicant’s attention, is not disputed by the applicant, which simply claims that the communication by e-mail cannot be considered a ‘legal means of notification’. In the present case, even though the applicant made its initial application and its confirmatory application by fax and even though the Commission’s initial response was sent to the applicant by post, the applicant makes no objection to the fact that the first contested decision was communicated to it by e-mail. The applicant indicates, however, in that regard that the intended recipient of the e-mail may have become aware of the message which was sent to him in that way on 28 January 2010 after his return from a day spent taking part in a hearing before the General Court. 42 Having regard to current means of communication and despite the silence of Regulation No 1049/2001 on the matter, expressly envisaging, in respect of electronic methods, only the lodging of applications for access to documents (see Article 6(1) of Regulation No 1049/2001) without indicating the methods which may be used to communicate the response to the person making the application, e-mail may be considered a method by which to communicate a decision to its intended recipient. In that regard it should be noted that the e-mail address used by the Commission on that occasion (‘the first e-mail address’) was communicated to it by the applicant, which mentioned it at the foot of the fax acting as support for the confirmatory application. 43 The second aspect, relating to the evidence provided by the Commission to prove the date on which notification took place, is a matter of disagreement between the parties. In order to prove the date on which the notification of the first contested decision took place, the Commission is relying on a document entitled ‘delivery report’, which is in the form of an e-mail sent by a ‘System Administrator’ to an e-mail address which contains the applicant’s domain name preceded by the expression ‘wmail’. 44 The content of that delivery report can be divided into three parts. 45 The first part contains the name of one of the agents of the Commission, which permits the presumption that the delivery report was printed from that agent’s inbox. That information was confirmed by the person concerned at the hearing. 46 The second part contains data enabling different elements of the delivery report to be identified, namely its sender (‘From : System Administrator’); its intended recipient (an e-mail address containing the first letter of the first name of the person who sent the initial application and confirmatory application for access to the documents on the applicant’s behalf, followed by the first three letters of that person’s surname, bracketed together with the applicant’s domain name preceded by the expression ‘wmail’) (‘the second e-mail address’); the date on which it was sent (Sent : mercredi 27 janvier 2010 15:26) and its subject-matter (Subject : Delivered: Delivery report: Your confirmatory application for access to documents under Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001 – GESTDEM 2009/4886). 47 The third part contains the actual text of the delivery report. That text indicates that the message sent to the first e-mail address, of which the subject-matter is ‘Your confirmatory application for access to documents under Regulation (EC) N° 1049/2001 – GESTDEM 2009/4886’, was delivered to the second e-mail address immediately, namely on 27 January 2010 at 15:26. 48 At the hearing, the parties were questioned on the evidential value which could be attributed to that delivery report. In particular, the parties were asked whether that document was capable of providing the same guarantees as those offered by the intended recipient’s signature or by the signature of a person recognised as competent for that purpose in the event of a notification carried out by an express delivery service with acknowledgment of receipt, the method generally used by the Commission to notify a decision to a company or an individual. In answer to those questions, the Commission indicated that it was not in a position to confirm that the delivery report relied on as evidence was not a document generated by its own services, but a document emanating from the recipient or an authorised third party. For its part, the applicant indicated, by referring in that regard to a document produced as an annex to the reply, that the content of the delivery report submitted by the Commission differed significantly, in both form and content, from the delivery report sent by its own IT system. It thus formally denies that the document originates from its system, as already shown by the fact that it was printed from the inbox of one of the agents of the Commission. 49 In light of the content of the delivery report produced by the Commission and taking into account the statements set out by the parties in that regard, it must therefore be held that the Commission is not in a position to establish that the first contested decision was brought to the attention of its intended recipient on 27 January 2010 as it claims. There are strong indications that the document mentioned above comes from the Commission’s IT system and there is no evidence enabling it to be established that the applicant’s IT system guarantees proper receipt of the e-mail by its intended recipient in the same way as, for example, the intended recipient’s signature or the signature of a person recognised as competent for that purpose in the event of a notification carried out by an express delivery service with acknowledgment of receipt. 50 In the present case, such proof could have been provided by, for example, a reply by e-mail sent by the intended recipient of the document. 51 Having thus failed to provide the evidence required in that regard, the Commission is not in a position to prove that the present action is out of time as regards the first contested decision. The plea of inadmissibility submitted in that regard must therefore be dismissed. 52 Incidentally, in response to the argument put forward by the Commission at the hearing that the ‘notification’ by e-mail in both the senses defined above is necessary in practice in order to enable the intended recipient to obtain a rapid response in accordance with the time-limits prescribed for that purpose by Regulation No 1049/2001, it should be noted that, in the present case, that would be tantamount to imposing a practice on the applicant which the Commission itself does not comply with. Indeed, the Commission has taken almost six weeks to send an acknowledgment of receipt to the intended recipient, that is, from 9 October 2009, the date on which the applicant’s fax submitting the confirmatory application was sent, in respect of which the applicant provides a transmission report of the same date, to 20 November 2009, the date on which the Commission sent the applicant an e-mail confirming receipt of its confirmatory application. Substance Summary of the arguments of the parties 53 In support of its action, the applicant puts forward two pleas in law. 54 The first plea in law, which is in three parts, alleges a failure to carry out an individual assessment of the documents requested and of the consequences which that may have had for the first and second contested decisions. In the first part, the applicant argues that the Commission infringed Regulation No 1049/2001 by failing to carry out an individual examination of each document covered by the applications for access in order to assess whether the exceptions relied on were applicable. In the second part, the applicant complains that the Commission has infringed Article 4(6) of Regulation No 1049/2001 by deciding not to grant partial access to any of the documents requested. In the third part, it also complains that the Commission did not seek to come to an equitable arrangement on the basis of Article 6(3) of that regulation. 55 In its written pleadings, the Commission observes that the first and second contested decisions are based on the analysis of samples allowing it to conclude that the same justification can be given for refusing access to all the documents requested. It also contends that those documents are manifestly covered in their entirety by a number of exceptions to the right of access. Partial access cannot therefore be granted. 56 The second plea alleges infringement of the various provisions relied on by the Commission in order to refuse access to the documents requested, namely the fourth indent of Article 4(1)(a) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which relates to the economic policy of the European Union, the first indent of Article 4(2) of that regulation, which relates to the protection of the commercial interests of a legal person, and the first indent of Article 4(1)(a) of that regulation, which relates to public security. According to the applicant, the reasons given to justify the application of those exceptions are too abstract and general. The information at issue does not compromise the rights of third parties. Nor is it capable of significantly undermining public security or a vital interest relating to the international relations of the European Union. 57 The Commission submits that the requests for quotation contain commercially sensitive information. By cross-checking, it is possible to ascertain the price proposed by a contractor or the price for a specific contract. In addition, those requests relate to a wide range of IT systems and the disclosure of all the related information would reveal the functioning and weaknesses of those systems. Malicious third parties could thus exploit or disrupt the proper functioning of the Commission’s IT systems. Findings of the General Court 58 It is common ground that the refusal to grant access to the documents requested is based on the individual examination of only a part of those documents. The Commission thus indicates, in the first and second contested decisions, that it was after a ‘careful assessment’, first, of 10 requests for quotation out of the 900 or so referred to in the first application and, second, of 57 requests for quotation out of the 6 000 or so referred to in the second application that it had ‘come to the conclusion that no access could be granted’. The Commission also takes the view that access cannot be granted to the remainder of the requests for quotation given that those requests are of a similar nature to those which have been examined. There is, accordingly, it submits, no need for an individual examination of those documents (see paragraphs 16 to 18 above). 59 In the present case, the Commission’s reasoning is based, in essence, on the finding that the three exceptions relied on apply to ‘the requested [requests for quotation]’ or to ‘the whole of the [requests for quotation]’ and on the finding that ‘no meaningful partial access is possible without harm for the interests described above’. On those grounds, the Commission concludes that the requests for quotation in question are ‘all covered in their entirety by the invoked exceptions to the right of public access’ (see paragraphs 19 to 22 and 24 above). 60 In other words, based on an examination carried out on a limited number of documents, the Commission believes that it is entitled to refuse to disclose any of the documents requested. The grounds relied on in the first and second contested decisions thus apply to any one of those documents, whether or not it has been subject to an individual examination. 61 It follows that the lawfulness of the Commission’s approach, which consists of having examined only a sample of the documents requested and then applying the conclusions reached following that examination to the remainder of the documents, necessarily depends on whether or not those conclusions are well founded. If it is found that the grounds relied on in order to refuse to grant any access, including partial access, to the 67 documents which were examined do not meet the requirements laid down in that regard by Regulation No 1049/2001, that fact will be such as to entail the annulment not only of the Commission’s decision relating to the documents examined, but also of the decision relating to all the other documents requested. 62 In that regard, concerning whether or not the exceptions invoked in the first and second contested decisions are well founded, it should be noted that, in accordance with the first recital of Regulation No 1049/2001, that regulation reflects the intention expressed in the second paragraph of Article 1 EU – inserted by the Treaty of Amsterdam – of marking a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen. As is stated in recital 2 in the preamble to Regulation No 1049/2001, the right of public access to documents of the institutions is related to the democratic nature of those institutions. To that end, Regulation No 1049/2001 is intended, as is apparent from recital 4 in its preamble and from Article 1, to give the fullest possible effect to the right of public access to documents of the institutions (Joined Cases C‑39/05 P and C‑52/05 P Sweden and Turco v Council [2008] ECR I‑4723, paragraphs 33 and 34, and Case C‑506/08 P Sweden v MyTravel and Commission [2011] ECR I‑0000, paragraphs 72 and 73). 63 However, that right is none the less subject to certain limitations based on grounds of public or private interest. More specifically, and in reflection of recital 11 in the preamble thereto, Article 4 of Regulation No 1049/2001 provides that the institutions are to refuse access to a document where its disclosure would undermine the protection of one of the interests protected by that provision. However, since they derogate from the principle of the widest possible public access to documents, those exceptions must be interpreted and applied strictly (see Sweden v MyTravel and Commission, paragraph 62 above, paragraphs 74 and 75 and the case-law cited). 64 Thus, if the institution concerned decides to refuse access to a document which it has been asked to disclose, it must, in principle, explain how disclosure of that document could specifically and actually undermine the interest protected by the exception – among those provided for in Article 4 of Regulation No 1049/2001 – upon which it is relying. Moreover, the risk of that undermining must be reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical (see Sweden v MyTravel and Commission, paragraph 62 above, paragraph 76 and the case-law cited). 65 A specific, individual examination of each document is also necessary where, even if it is clear that a request for access refers to documents covered by an exception, only such an examination can enable the institution to assess the possibility of granting the applicant partial access under Article 4(6) of Regulation No 1049/2001. In the context of applying the Code of conduct concerning public access to Council and Commission documents (OJ 1993 L 340, p. 41), the Court has, moreover, already considered an assessment of documents by reference to categories rather than on the basis of the actual information contained in those documents to be insufficient, since the examination required of an institution must enable it to assess specifically whether an exception invoked actually applies to all the information contained in those documents (see judgment of 30 January 2008 in Case T‑380/04 Terezakis v Commission, not published in the ECR, paragraph 87 and the case-law cited). 66 The arguments of the parties relating to the infringement of Article 4(6) of Regulation No 1049/2001, pursuant to which ‘[i]f only parts of the requested document are covered by any of the exceptions, the remaining parts of the document shall be released’, must be examined in the light of those principles. 67 In the present case, it should be noted that there is a contradiction between the position adopted by the Commission in the first and second contested decisions and in the defence, where it explicitly refuses to grant partial access to any of the documents requested by the applicant (see paragraph 24 above), and the position adopted by that institution in the rejoinder or, again, at the hearing. 68 Thus, initially, the Commission claimed in the defence, as it had in the first and second contested decisions, that all of the documents examined were covered in their entirety by the invoked exceptions and that no meaningful partial access could be granted as such access would harm the interests protected by those exceptions. 69 However, in its rejoinder, the Commission indicated that several types of information contained in the requests for quotation were not protected by the three exceptions invoked in the first and second contested decisions. At that stage, the Commission even acknowledged that that information could, in principle, be disclosed to the applicant through partial access to the documents requested. None the less, the Commission claimed that such partial disclosure would run contrary to what it terms ‘good administration’. According to the Commission, that information would ‘not be meaningful for the aim pursued by the applicant’, and realising that partial access would create a ‘disproportionate administrative burden’ for the Commission’s services. 70 Given that the argument expounded in the rejoinder did not correspond with the grounds set out in the first and second contested decisions for rejecting the possibility of granting partial access to the documents requested (see paragraph 24 above), the General Court ordered the Commission to produce the 67 documents which make up the two samples evoked in the first and second contested decisions and asked that institution to indicate, in particular, for two documents from the first sample and six documents from the second sample, which information was covered by each of the three exceptions invoked in the first and second contested decisions and which information could have been subject to partial access. 71 It is apparent from the Commission’s responses that a substantial part of each of the 67 documents examined by that institution is not covered by any of the three exceptions invoked in the first and second contested decisions and could have been disclosed to the applicant without harming the interests protected by those exceptions, which the Commission moreover acknowledged at the hearing. 72 To give just one example, as regards the first of the eight documents referred to in the summary table created by the Commission and communicated to the applicant at the hearing, it is apparent that only one page out of the 28 contained in that document, namely page 14 of the technical annex, is considered by the Commission as capable of being covered by the exception relating to the protection of public security, the only exception invoked in respect of that document. The other 27 pages of that document are thus not covered by any of the exceptions to the principle of access to documents. 73 It must be concluded that the Commission is manifestly not in a position to prove what it claims in the first and second contested decisions when it states that ‘no meaningful partial access is possible without harm for the interests described above’ and that it must, consequently, conclude that ‘the [requests for quotation] … are all covered in their entirety by the invoked exceptions to the right of public access’. 74 Therefore, the Commission was wrong to conclude that it was entitled to refuse partial access to any of the 67 documents examined by its services and that it could extend that conclusion to the remainder of the documents requested. 75 Accordingly, the first and second contested decisions must be annulled. 76 That finding is not undermined by the Commission’s assertion that a partial disclosure would be contrary to the principle of good administration since the information likely to be disclosed would not be meaningful for the aim pursued by the applicant and that realising that partial access would create a disproportionate burden of work for the Commission’s services, or by the fact that, at the hearing, the Commission indicated that it was prepared to grant partial access to the 67 documents which it had examined in order to adopt the first and second contested decisions, while observing that it would be disproportionate to require the institution to do the same for the remainder of the documents requested. 77 First of all, it should be noted that that argument put forward by the Commission following the adoption of the first and second contested decisions cannot be relied on in order to correct the grounds set out therein, which do not correspond to the content of the documents examined as apparent from the summary table created by the Commission and communicated to the applicant at the hearing. 78 Next, it must be stated that Article 4(6) of Regulation No 1049/2001 does not authorise the interpretation suggested by the Commission. First, that provision, like the entirety of the regulation, does not require that the person applying for access to the documents prove that the document requested is ‘meaningful’ to him. In addition, in any event, what is meaningful or meaningless to the applicant cannot be determined by the institution charged with replying to his request. Second, the provision at issue in the present case cannot be interpreted in such a way as to amount to exempting the institution concerned from an obligation which is expressly envisaged in Regulation No 1049/2001, namely disclosure of the parts of the document not covered by the exceptions provided by that regulation. It is clear from Regulation No 1049/2001 that the public must be given a right of access to documents which is as wide as possible and that exceptions to that right of access must be interpreted strictly. 79 Lastly, logically speaking, the Commission cannot claim to be entitled, in view of the large number of similar documents, to examine only a part of the documents requested using samples, for the purposes of ascertaining whether they should be disclosed to the public, and then to take the view – as it did at the hearing – that, if it emerges that that examination permits the conclusion that those documents can be disclosed in full or in part, that exercise is only valid for the documents examined. If the Commission intends to apply generally the impact of the result of that type of assessment of the documents examined to the documents which have not been examined, its findings must be valid in both situations: in the event of access being refused or in the event of access being granted. 80 Therefore, by refusing access to those documents or to those parts of the documents which, as it acknowledged at the hearing, could, following a specific individual examination of their content in the light of the exceptions relied on, have been disclosed to the applicant, the Commission committed an error of law which entails the annulment of the first and second contested decisions. 81 Moreover, the General Court is not convinced that the reasoning expounded by the Commission in the first and second contested decisions regarding the three exceptions invoked therein is capable of justifying, in the present case, the refusal to grant access to certain parts of the documents requested. 82 Regarding the first exception invoked, namely the fourth indent of Article 4(1)(a) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which enables the Commission to refuse access to a document where its disclosure would undermine the protection of the public interest as regards the economic policy of the European Union, it need only be observed that, if that policy is indeed intended, as the Commission indicates in the first and second contested decisions (see paragraph 20 above), to ensure fair and undistorted competition within the internal market, the fact remains that the explanations provided in that regard, in the first and second contested decisions, to justify applying that exception are not sufficient to establish how access to the documents requested could specifically and actually undermine that objective in a way that is reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical. 83 Theoretically speaking, the Commission presumes that, if the public were to obtain the documents requested, tenderers interested in contracts likely to be concluded in the future could use that information to ‘submit manipulated offers … distorting the competition’. As a general rule, a tendering procedure where the prices quoted in the past for a corresponding service could be known by tenderers if they cross‑checked the information publicly available seems more likely to lead to a situation of genuine competition than to a situation where competition would be distorted. 84 In addition, practically speaking, it is apparent that the information which the Commission seeks to protect under that exception corresponds to the number of working days requested of the intended recipient of the request for quotation. The Commission itself takes the view that that information is capable of being protected under the exception mentioned above for only a part of the documents provided. For example, it is assumed that the information relating to the number of days of services provided must be protected for four of the eight documents referred to in the summary table communicated to the applicant at the hearing (documents 3.2, 3.4, 3.6 and 3.7), whereas, on the Commission’s own admission, that is not the case for three other documents in that table (documents 3.3, 3.5 and 3.8). 85 Regarding the second exception invoked, namely the first indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which enables the Commission to refuse access to a document where its disclosure would undermine the protection of the commercial interests of a legal person, including intellectual property, unless there is an overriding public interest in disclosure, it should be noted that the documents requested come from the Commission and not its co-contractors. In that context, it is a priori difficult to see how those documents contain sensitive commercial data concerning third parties (see paragraph 21 above). 86 While it cannot be excluded that the Commission may claim, as such, protection of its own ‘commercial interests’, inter alia because it has commercial relations with third parties and because that protection includes ‘intellectual property’, the fact remains that, as regards the protection of those interests, the explanations provided in that regard in the first and second contested decisions (see paragraph 21 above) are not sufficient to establish how access to the documents requested could specifically and actually undermine that objective in a way that is reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical. Moreover, since it is apparent that the information which the Commission seeks to protect under that exception corresponds to the number of working days requested of the intended recipient of the request for quotation evoked above, the reasoning expounded on that subject raises the same problem of consistency as the reasoning already evoked on the subject of the previous exception (see paragraph 84 above). 87 Regarding the third exception invoked, namely the first indent of Article 4(1)(a) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which enables the Commission to refuse access to a document where its disclosure would undermine public security, it must be borne in mind that the applicant has produced convincing evidence in response to the questions put by the General Court that some of the information which the Commission claims is capable of being covered by that exception is already available to the public. That evidence given by the applicant in respect of documents which are comparable to those forming the subject-matter of the first and second contested decisions, namely the documents presented in Annex 6 to the reply, applies by analogy to the similar information also contained in those documents forming the subject‑matter of the contested decisions. 88 In that context, the explanations provided in the first and second contested decisions (see paragraph 22 above) are not sufficient to establish how access to the documents requested could specifically and actually undermine public security in a way that is reasonably foreseeable and not purely hypothetical. 89 In any event, in order to annul the first and second contested decisions, it is sufficient to state that those decisions wrongly refuse to grant even partial access to the documents requested. 90 For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that, although, contrary to what the applicant claims, the Commission has not infringed Article 6(3) of Regulation No 1049/2001 which provides, not an obligation, but merely a possibility for the Commission to confer with the applicant with a view to finding a fair solution, where it is confronted with a request concerning a very large number of documents, an optional meeting of that kind could help to avoid a scenario where the Commission decides on the disclosure of information which is of no interest to the person making the request. Costs 91 Under Article 87(2) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the successful party’s pleadings. Since the Commission has been unsuccessful, it must be ordered to bear its own costs and to pay those of Evropaïki Dynamiki – Proigmena Systimata Tilepikoinonion Pliroforikis kai Tilematikis AE, in accordance with the form of order sought by the applicant. 92 Since the Rules of Procedure only cover costs and not ‘other expenses incurred by the applicant in connection with the action’, those expenses, which moreover have not been defined or specified by the applicant, are not covered by the above order and the request that the Commission be ordered to pay those expenses must, accordingly, be refused. On those grounds, THE GENERAL COURT (First Chamber) hereby: 1. Annuls the decision of the European Commission of 27 January 2010 refusing access to the requests for quotation relating to Lot 3A of tendering procedure DIGIT/PO/2005/113 – ESP-DESIS; 2. Annuls the Commission’s decision of 11 March 2010 refusing access to requests for quotation relating to all the other lots covered by that tendering procedure, all the lots covered by the tendering procedures DI/0005 ESP and ADMIN/DI/2/PO/2003/192 ESP-DIMA and by Framework Contract BUDG/0101; 3. Orders the Commission to bear its own costs and the costs incurred by Evropaïki Dynamiki – Proigmena Systimata Tilepikoinonion Pliroforikis kai Tilematikis AE. Azizi Vadapalas Frimodt Nielsen Delivered in open court in Luxembourg on 6 December 2012. [Signatures] * Language of the case: English.