Action brought on 11 January 2011 - Timab Industries and CFPR v Commission
(Case T-14/11)
Language of the case: French
Parties
Applicants: Timab Industries (Dinard, France) and Cie financière et de participations Roullier (CFPR) (Saint-Malo, France) (represented by: N. Lenoir, lawyer)
Defendant: European Commission
Form of order sought
annul the decision;
order the Commission to pay the costs in their entirety.
Pleas in law and main arguments
The applicants seek the annulment of the Commission's decision of 17 November 2010 implicitly refusing access to Commission documents relating to the procedure initiated by the Commission in Case COMP/38866 concerning a cartel in the European market for animal feed phosphates.
In support of the action the applicants rely on two pleas in law.
1. The first plea in law alleges infringement of the obligation to state reasons in so far as the Commission did not reply to the confirmatory application for access to its decision or decisions fixing the probable ranges of fines as regards the addressees of Decision C(2010) 5004 Final, which was adopted as a result of settlement proceedings.
2. The second plea in law alleges errors of law and manifest errors of assessment in so far as the Commission relied, during the examination procedure in respect of the application for access to the documents, on the first and third indents of Article 4(2) and the second subparagraph of Article 4(3) of Regulation No 1049/2001
1 to justify the refusal of access. The applicants submit that the documents requested:
are not opinions, but decisions in respect of which it is not established that communication of them may seriously undermine the decision-making process;
do not contain any sensitive commercial data;
have no connection with inspections, investigations and audits.
____________1 - Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents (OJ 2001 L 145, p. 43).