Salzgitter AG v Commission of the European Communities.
Date: 2003-10-02
41.  It is for the Community judicature to decide, in the light of the circumstances of the case and in accordance with the provisions of the Rules of Procedure on measures of inquiry, whether it is necessary for a document to be produced. As regards the Court of First Instance, it follows from Article 49 read in conjunction with Article 65(b) of its Rules of Procedure that a request for production of documents is a measure of inquiry which the Court may order at any stage of the proceedings (Case C-286/95 P   Commission   v   ICI   [2000] ECR I-2341, paragraphs 49 and 50).
43.  In principle, the assessment by the Court of First Instance of the probative value of a document may not be subjected to review by the Court in appeal proceedings. As is clear from Article 32d(1) CS and Article 51 of the ECSC Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal lies on a point of law only. The Court of First Instance therefore has sole jurisdiction to find and appraise the relevant facts and to assess the evidence, except where those facts and that evidence have been distorted (see, to that effect, Case C-136/92 P   Commission   v   Brazzelli Lualdi and Others   [1994] ECR I-1981, paragraphs 49 and 66; Joined Cases C-238/99 P, C-244/99 P, C-245/99 P, C-247/99 P, C-250/99 P, C-251/99 P, C-252/99 P and C-254/99 P   Limburgse Vinyl Maatschappij and Others   v   Commission   [2002] ECR I-8375, paragraph 194; and Case C-312/00 P   Commission   v   Camar and Tico   [2002] ECR I-11355, paragraph 69).
44.  Given that this copy of the minutes was available to the Court of First Instance, which it accepted as being a certified true copy of the original, it was under no obligation whatsoever to adopt a further measure for taking evidence in order to obtain the original if it formed the view that such a measure was unnecessary to establish the truth (see, to that effect,   Limburgse Vinyl Maatschappij  , cited above, paragraph 404).
54.  With respect to the reference, in paragraph 141 of the judgment under appeal, to the presumption of validity enjoyed by the measures of Community institutions (see, inter alia, Case C-137/92 P   Commission   v   BASF and Others   [1994] ECR I-2555, paragraph 48), suffice it to state that the Court of First Instance did not draw from that presumption any factual or legal conclusion but relied solely on its own assessment of the facts and evidence to conclude that the contested decision had been properly authenticated.
55.  It follows that, in so far as the third ground of appeal is directed against that reference, it is irrelevant and therefore unfounded.
71.  It is settled case-law that the purpose of the obligation to state the reasons on which an individual decision is based is to enable the Court to review the legality of the decision and to provide the person concerned with sufficient information to make it possible to ascertain whether the decision is well founded or whether it is vitiated by a defect which may permit its legality to be contested (Case 32/86   Sisma   v   Commission   [1987] ECR 1645, paragraph 8).
75.  With regard to statements of figures relating to the calculation of fines, it is appropriate to point out that, however useful and desirable such figures may be, they are not essential to compliance with the duty to state reasons for a decision imposing fines; in any event, the Commission cannot, by mechanical recourse to arithmetical formulas alone, divest itself of its own power of assessment (Case C-291/98 P   Sarrió   v   Commission   [2000] ECR I-9991, paragraphs 75 to 77, and   Limburgse Vinyl Maatschappij  , paragraph 464).