4

In that regard, the President of the General Court recalled, in paragraphs 24 to 31 of that order, the principles developed on that matter in the case-law of the Court and the General Court. In the light of those principles, he held in paragraphs 32 to 48 of the order under appeal as follows: ‘32 In the present case, it should be noted, as a preliminary point, that the applicants, relying on paragraph 38 of the order [of the Vice-President of the Court] of 10 September 2013, Commission v Pilkington Group (C‑278/13 P(R), EU:C:2013:558), argue that, as interim protection is sought for information alleged to be confidential, the assessment of whether publication would result in serious and irreparable harm must start from the premiss that the information alleged to be confidential is in fact confidential. 33 However, the circumstances of the case that gave rise to the order of 10 September 2013, Commission v Pilkington Group (C‑278/13 P(R), EU:C:2013:558), and those of the case that gave rise to the order of 2 March 2016, Evonik Degussa v Commission (C‑162/15 P–R, EU:C:2016:142), are very different from those of the present case. 34 As follows, in particular, from paragraphs 18 and 38 of the order of 10 September 2013, Commission v Pilkington Group (C‑278/13 P(R), EU:C:2013:558), Pilkington Group Ltd, in its action for annulment, had disputed the Commission’s assessment that the information which it intended to disclose under Article 30(1) of Regulation No 1/2003 did not constitute business secrets within the meaning of, inter alia, Article 339 TFEU and Articles 28(1) and 30(2) of that regulation. Therefore, the considerations which the court hearing the application for interim relief took into account in order to conclude that the condition of urgency was established in that case were based on the premiss, expressly referred to in paragraph 47 of that order, that the information in question in that case was covered by the obligation of professional secrecy. 35 Likewise, it is clear from paragraph 84 of the order [of the Vice-President of the Court] of 2 March 2016, Evonik Degussa v Commission (C‑162/15 P–R, EU:C:2016:142) that Evonik Degussa GmbH had challenged the finding that the information at issue did not constitute business secrets and was also not covered by the obligation of professional secrecy. 36 Moreover, the appellants in the cases that gave rise to the orders of 10 September 2013, Commission v Pilkington Group (C‑278/13 P(R), EU:C:2013:558) and of 2 March 2016, Evonik Degussa v Commission (C‑162/15 P–R, EU:C:2016:142) claimed, as emerges from paragraphs 47 and 83 respectively of those orders, that the publication of the information at issue would be liable to affect them adversely by reason of the very nature of that information. 37 By contrast, with regard to the present case, in the first place, it must be noted that the applicants do not claim that [the information at issue] constitutes business secrets. 38 In the second place, except for the assertion that [the information at issue] is confidential, the application for interim relief contains little specific information as to the nature and content of the material that the applicants claim is confidential. 39 In the third place, the applicants are not seeking to prove that [the information at issue] has an intrinsic commercial sensitivity that is capable of being exploited by their competitors in the context of normal competition. 40 In the fourth place, in so far as the applicants submit that [the information at issue] ‘involves evidence of the infringement ... revealing in detail the infringement, such as the names of customers and projects concerned by the conduct, and figures relating to prices charged and objectives pursued by participants, ... as well as the causal link between such damage and the infringement’, they point to recitals 284, 372(g) and 436 of the power cables decision as ‘clear examples of the type of ... information’ to which they are referring. 41 However, recitals 284, 372(g) and 436 of the power cables decision do not mention the ‘names of customers and projects concerned’ and do not contain ‘figures relating to prices charged’. 42 In the fifth place, it is evident from case-law that information that was secret or confidential, but that is at least five years old, must, as a rule, on account of the passage of time, be considered historical and therefore as having lost its secret or confidential nature unless, exceptionally, the party relying on that nature shows that, despite its age, that information still constitutes an essential element of its commercial position or that of interested third parties. Those considerations, which give rise to a rebuttable presumption, are valid both in the context of requests for confidential treatment in respect of parties intervening in actions before the EU Courts and in the context of requests for confidentiality with a view to the publication by the Commission of a decision finding an infringement of competition law (judgment of 14 March 2017, Evonik Degussa v Commission, C‑162/15 P, EU:C:2017:205, paragraph 64). 43 In the present case, [the information at issue] was gathered during the inspection in 2009. However, the applicants are not seeking to demonstrate the reasons why [the information at issue], by its very nature, has not lost its secret or confidential nature, despite the passing of time. 44 In the sixth place, the applicants are not seeking to prove the confidential nature of [the information at issue] by referring to the very nature of the information, but rather by arguing that their right to an effective remedy and the principle of the presumption of innocence require that that information should not be disclosed before it has been established that that information was obtained lawfully in the context of Case T‑449/14. 45 In the seventh place, it must be noted that, according to case-law, ascertaining whether information comes within the ambit of professional secrecy generally comprises three stages, namely, first, that that information must be known only to a limited number of persons; second, that its disclosure must be likely to cause serious harm to the person who provided it or to third parties; and, third, and last, that the interests liable to be harmed by disclosure must, objectively, be worthy of protection (see, to that effect, judgment of 28 January 2015, Evonik Degussa v Commission, T‑341/12, EU:T:2015:51, paragraph 94 and the case-law cited). 46 Thus, an examination of the condition relating to urgency overlaps, to an extent, with an examination of whether [the information at issue] must be regarded as being covered by professional secrecy, which involves, in the context of interim proceedings, an examination of the condition relating to a prima facie case. 47 In those conditions, the mere allegation — which, moreover, remains entirely unsubstantiated — that the information the disclosure of which is at issue is covered by professional secrecy cannot, due to the risk of distorting the analysis of the condition relating to urgency, be sufficient to establish the premiss that that information is covered by professional secrecy. 48 Consequently, contrary to the cases that gave rise to the orders of 10 September 2013, Commission v Pilkington Group (C‑278/13 P(R), EU:C:2013:558) and of 2 March 2016, Evonik Degussa v Commission (C‑162/15 P–R, EU:C:2016:142), the analysis of urgency in the present case cannot start from the premiss that [the information at issue] is covered by professional secrecy.’