2

The facts of the dispute are summarised at paragraphs 2 to 8 of the order under appeal as follows: ‘2 By the contested decision the … Commission rejected the request for the continuation of the non-confidential version of its Decision C (2008) 6815 final of 12 November 2008 relating to a proceeding pursuant to Article 81 [EC] and Article 53 of the EEA Agreement (Case COMP/39.125 – Car glass) (‘the 2008 Decision’), as published in February 2010 on the website of the “Competition” Directorate General. 3 In the 2008 Decision, the Commission found that an infringement of Article 81 EC had been committed between 1998 and 2003 within the European Economic Area (EEA) by [Pilkington Group Ltd (‘Pilkington’)], and other companies belonging to its group, by a number of companies belonging to the French Saint‑Gobain group and the Japanese Asahi group – to which AGC Glass Europe, among others, belongs – and by the Belgian company Soliver with regard to sales of glass for new vehicles and replacement parts for motor vehicles (“the car glass cartel”). As a consequence, the Commission imposed fines totalling more than EUR 1.3 billion on the members of that cartel, the [Pilkington] group being fined EUR 370 million. 4 After taking into account requests for confidential treatment submitted by the addressees of the 2008 Decision, the Commission published, in February 2010, a full-text provisional non-confidential version of that decision on its website. That publication was not challenged by [Pilkington]. 5 By letter of 28 April 2011, the Commission informed [Pilkington] of its intention to publish, for reasons of transparency, a fuller non-confidential version of the 2008 Decision and to reject, to that end, several requests for confidential treatment that it had received concerning (i) customer names, product names or descriptions of products, as well as any other information which might identify individual customers (“category I information”), (ii) the number of parts supplied by [Pilkington], the share of the business of a particular car manufacturer, pricing calculations or price changes etc. (“category II information”), and (iii) information which, according to [Pilkington], might identify certain members of its staff who were allegedly involved in implementing the cartel (“category III information”). The Commission invited [Pilkington], should it not agree, to refer the matter to the Hearing Officer pursuant to Decision 2011/695/EU of the President of the European Commission of 13 October 2011 on the function and terms of reference of the hearing officer in certain competition proceedings (OJ 2011 L 275, p. 29). 6 Noting that the proposed more complete version contained a considerable amount of information which had not been published in February 2010 for reasons of confidentiality, [Pilkington], by letter of 30 June 2011, informed the Hearing Officer that it objected to publication of a version of the 2008 Decision which would be more complete than the version published in February 2010, maintaining that category I and II information had to be protected since it constituted business secrets, whilst disclosure of category III information would make it possible to identify the natural persons, namely employees of [Pilkington] who had allegedly been involved in implementing the cartel. [Pilkington] thus requested confidential treatment for all that information. 7 In the contested decision, signed ‘[f]or the Commission’, the Hearing Officer, whilst accepting the confidential nature of certain information referred to by [Pilkington], none the less rejected the majority of its requests. 8 [Pilkington] was notified of the contested decision on 9 August 2012.’