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The judgment under appeal contains the following findings: ‘1 By decision of 20 April 2005, the Commission … authorised, pursuant to Article 6(1)(b) [of Regulation No 139/2004], the planned acquisition, by way of purchase of shares, of the Czech company Unipetrol by the Polish company [PKN Orlen], which had been notified to the Commission on 11 March 2005. 2 By letter of 28 June 2006, the applicant, Agrofert Holding a.s. (“Agrofert”), requested the Commission to grant it access to all unpublished documents concerning the notification and pre-notification procedure in respect of the acquisition of Unipetrol by PKN Orlen, on the basis of Regulation No 1049/2001. ... 4 By letter of 2 August 2006, … the Commission’s Directorate General (DG) “Competition” refused to grant the request for access to the documents. After pointing out that the request was general in nature, it expressed the view that the documents in question were covered by the exceptions laid down in Article 4(2) and (3) of Regulation No 1049/2001. It added that disclosure of documents originating from the notifying parties and from third parties would be contrary to the obligation of professional secrecy laid down in Article [339 TFEU] and Article 17(1) and (2) of [Regulation No 139/2004]. It also stated that partial access to the documents was not possible and that no argument capable of establishing the existence of an overriding public interest in disclosure had been adduced. 5 By letter of 18 August 2006, the applicant submitted a confirmatory application to the Commission ... It challenged the Commission’s refusal, claiming, inter alia, that it should have been granted partial access to the requested documents. In addition, it asserted that there was an overriding public interest justifying disclosure of the documents in question, consisting in the damage which it and the minority shareholders of Unipetrol had suffered. ... 9 By [the contested decision], the Secretariat-General of the Commission confirmed the refusal to grant access to the documents in respect of the four categories of documents identified. 10 Firstly, the Commission takes the view that the documents exchanged between it and the notifying parties contain commercially sensitive information relating to the commercial strategies of the notifying parties, their sales volumes, their market shares or customer relations. Accordingly, the exception laid down in the first indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001, concerning the protection of commercial interests, applies … It also refers to Article 17 of Regulation [No 139/2004] with regard to the obligation of professional secrecy … The Commission adds that, since the objective of the merger investigation procedures is to ascertain whether a notified operation does or does not give the notifying parties market power which is likely to have a significant effect on competition, all documents supplied by the notifying parties in the context of such a procedure necessarily relate to commercially sensitive information. 11 The Commission also takes the view that the exception set out in the third indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001, which concerns in particular the protection of investigations, is applicable here. According to the Commission, the parties involved in merger proceedings must be entitled to a legitimate expectation that sensitive information contained in the documents which they have provided will not be disclosed. The Commission takes the view that disclosure of the documents in question would undermine the climate of mutual trust between it and undertakings … 12 Secondly, the Commission is of the opinion that the documents exchanged between it and third parties come within the exceptions set out in the first and third indents of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001 for the same reasons as those advanced in relation to the documents exchanged between it and the notifying parties. … 14 Fourthly, the Commission identifies the following internal documents: — … (Document 1); — an inter-service consultation note enclosing a draft decision on the notification (Document 2); — a reply from the Legal Service relating to the above consultation note (Document 3); — an exchange of e-mails between the competent Commission service and the Legal Service on the draft decision (Document 4); — replies to the above consultation note from the other Commission services concerned (Document 5); — … (Document 6); — … (Document 7). 15 [Documents 1, 6 and 7 were not the subject of the proceedings.] 16 With regard to Documents 2 to 5, the Commission takes the view that their disclosure would seriously undermine its decision-making process, within the meaning of the second subparagraph of Article 4(3) of Regulation No 1049/2001. It points to the collegiate nature of that decision-making process and emphasises the need to maintain trust within its services. According to the Commission, those documents reflect freely-expressed opinions and discussions within the services. Their disclosure in the present case would seriously jeopardise independent expression of opinions … In addition, it would reduce the willingness to cooperate on the part … of the undertakings affected by the notification and third parties. 17 The Commission is of the opinion that Documents 3 and 4 are also covered by the exception based on the protection of legal advice, laid down in the second indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001 … 18 Finally, the Commission adds that there is no overriding public interest which could justify the disclosure of the documents requested in the present case and that it was also not possible to grant partial access. In that regard, it points out that, as the purpose of the Commission’s investigation was to examine the market conditions surrounding the proposed merger … it was therefore not possible to identify the parts of the documents exchanged between it and the parties concerned “that do not contain non-commercial information or are not investigation-related and the reading of which in itself would make sense” … Finally, it refers to the fact that the published version of the decision on the merger in question contains, by definition, the information that could be disclosed and constitutes a partial access to the parts of the documents requested which are not covered by the applicable exceptions.’