Action brought on 11 April 2011 - Timab Industries and CFPR v Commission

(Case T-211/11)

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

The applicants claim that the Court should:

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 1 February 2011 refusing access to certain Commission documents relating to a procedure pursuant to Article 101 TFEU and Article 13 of the Agreement on the European Economic Area, concerning a cartel on the European market in animal feed phosphates (Case COMP/38866).

In support of the action, the applicants rely on three pleas in law:

First plea in law, alleging error of law and a manifest error of assessment in relation to the second subparagraph of Article 4(3) of Regulation No 1049/2001, ¹ in so far as the documents applied for are not opinions but decisions in respect of which it has not been established that disclosure might seriously undermine the decision-making process.

Second plea in law, alleging error of law and a manifest error of assessment in relation to the first indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001, in so far as the documents applied for do not contain any sensitive commercial information precluding, even partly, their disclosure.

Third plea in law, alleging error of law and a manifest error of assessment in relation to the third indent of Article 4(2) of Regulation No 1049/2001, in so far as the Commission contended that the purpose of inspections, investigations and audits would be undermined.

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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).