Order — ECLI:EU:C:2000:685
Date: 2000-12-13
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Competition;Agreements, decisions and concerted practices;Exclusive agreements
Concepts: General;Appeals;Bringing matters before the Commission
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded;Appeal - inadmissible
Origin: France

Summary of the Order 
1. Procedure — Procedure before the Court of First Instance — Document mistakenly 
produced by a party 
2. Competition — Administrative procedure — Investigation of complaints — Exces­
sive duration — Consequences — Action for annulment of the Commission's deci­
sion — Length of the procedure before the Court of First Instance — Excessive 
duration — Consequences 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-39/00 P 
3. Competition — Administrative procedure — Investigation of complaints — 
Account to be taken of the Community interest in the investigation of a particular 
case — Criteria of assessment 
4. Appeals — Grounds — Plea directed against the decision of the Court of First 
Instance on costs — Inadmissible if all other pleas dismissed 
(EC Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 51, second para.) 
1. The Court of First Instance properly 
decided that a document whose pro­
duction had been requested neither by 
the Court of First Instance nor by one 
of the parties should be removed from 
the file and returned to the party which 
had mistakenly produced it. 
(see para. 37) 
2. The excessive amount of time it may 
have taken to deal with a complaint 
that the competition rules have been 
infringed cannot, as a rule, affect the 
actual content of the final decision 
adopted by the Commission. It cannot, 
save in exceptional circumstances, alter 
the substantive matters which, accord­
ing to the case, determine whether or 
not the existence of an infringement of 
the competition rules is established or 
give the Commission good reason not 
to conduct an investigation. 
Similarly, as regards the length of the 
proceedings before the Court of First 
Instance in an action for annulment of 
a Commission decision, in the absence 
of any indication that the unreasonable 
length of the proceedings affected their 
outcome in any way, that length of time 
cannot justify setting aside the judg­
ment of the Court of First Instance in 
so far as it rules on the legal character­
isation of the facts before that court in 
the light of the applicable rules. 
(see paras 44-46) 
3. The assessment by the Commission of 
the Community interest presented by a 
complaint that the competition rules 
have been infringed depends on the 
circumstances of each case. Accord­
ingly, the number of criteria of assess­
ment the Commission may refer to 
should not be limited, nor conversely 
should it be required to have recourse 
exclusively to certain criteria. 
(see para. 67) 
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SGA V COMMISSION 
4. Where all the other pleas in an appeal 
have been rejected, a plea concerning 
the alleged illegality of a decision of the 
Court of First Instance as to costs must 
be rejected as inadmissible under the 
second paragraph of Article 51 of the 
EC Statute of the Court of Justice, 
which provides that no appeal is to lie 
regarding only the amount of the costs 
or the party ordered to pay them. 
(see para. 77) 
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