Dow Chemical Ibérica, SA, and others v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 1989-10-17
11 In interpreting Article 14 of Regulation No 17, regard must be had in particular to the rights of the defence, a principle whose fundamental nature has been stressed on numerous occasions in the Court' s decisions ( see, in particular, the judgment of 9 November 1983 in Case 322/81 Michelin v Commission (( 1983 )) ECR 3461, paragraph 7 ).
16 None the less, in all the legal systems of the Member States, any intervention by the public authorities in the sphere of private activities of any person, whether natural or legal, must have a legal basis and be justified on the grounds laid down by law, and, consequently, those systems provide, albeit in different forms, protection against arbitrary or disproportionate intervention . The need for such protection must be recognized as a general principle of Community law . In that regard, it should be pointed out that the Court has held that it has the power to determine whether measures of investigation taken by the Commission under the ECSC Treaty are excessive ( judgment of 14 December 1962 in Joined Cases 5 to 11 and 13 to 15/62 San Michele and Others v Commission (( 1962 )) ECR 449 ).
26 In that regard, it should be noted first that the Commission is required to specify the subject-matter and purpose of the investigation . That obligation is a fundamental requirement not merely in order to show that the investigation to be carried out on the premises of the undertakings concerned is justified but also to enable those undertakings to assess the scope of their duty to cooperate while at the same time safeguarding the rights of the defence .
38 It should be pointed out that although they are invoking the Community principle of proportionality, the applicants' argument amounts in reality to saying that the validity of the contested decisions depends on an interpretation of Regulation No 17 in the light of a provision of national law . However, as the Court already decided in its judgment of 17 December 1970 in Case 11/70 Internationale Handelsgesellschaft v Einfuhr - und Vorratsstelle fuer Getreide und Futtermittel (( 1970 )) ECR 1125, paragraph 3, the validity of Community measures can only be judged in the light of Community law and, therefore, reference either to infringements of fundamental rights as formulated in the Constitution of a Member State or to the principles of a national constitutional structure cannot affect the validity of a Community measure or its effect in the territory of that State .
45 As has been pointed out above, the Commission' s obligation to specify the subject-matter and purpose of the investigation constitutes a fundamental guarantee of the rights of the defence of the undertakings concerned . It follows that the scope of the obligation to state the reasons on which decisions ordering investigations are based cannot be restricted on the basis of considerations concerning the effectiveness of the investigation . Although the Commission is not required to communicate to the addressee of a decision ordering an investigation all the information at its disposal concerning the presumed infringements, or to make a precise legal analysis of those infringements, it must none the less clearly indicate the presumed facts which it intends to investigate .
62 It should be noted first in that regard that since no derogation is provided for in respect of Regulation No 17, that measure is applicable in the new Member States as from the time of accession by virtue of the general rule laid down in Article 2 of the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic . Consequently, undertakings established in Spain could be the subject of investigations with effect from 1 January 1986 .