First letter to the addressees

First letter to the addressees

Without undue delay after the adoption of the decision by the Commission, all parties receive a letter signed by the case manager or Head of Unit.

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In this letter, the addressees are requested to confirm that – the summary of the decision, – the final report of the Hearing Officer, and – the opinion of the Advisory Committee do not contain any confidential information, and, in particular, no business secrets.

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They are furthermore requested to – provide a complete non-confidential version of the decision that has been addressed to them. This means that they will have to identify any confidential information in the decision that has been addressed to them (by highlighting – and not blanking out – the relevant parts in the entire decision), – to substantiate their confidentiality claims for each piece of information claimed to be confidential, and – to provide a concise summary of each piece of deleted information. In this letter, the addressees will be reminded that confidential information refers, in particular, to • business secrets (see section 6.1 ), and • information that the addressee submitted under the Leniency Notice (see section 6.3).

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The summary of the decision should be attached to the letter in paper or “.pdf” format.

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The deadline for the reply is usually two weeks starting from the day the first Commission letter was received.

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This letter indicates that in accordance with Article 16(4) of Regulation 773/2004 in absence of a reply the Commission will consider that none of the documents in question contain confidential information. Note: Whereas the summary, the final report of the Hearing Officer and the opinion of the Advisory Committee are unlikely to contain confidential information, the decision notified to the addressees ('confidential version') will contain such information.

Resources

See Also

References

• Information about First letter to the addressees in the Antitrust Manual of Procedures for the application of Articles 101 and 102 TFEU (Internal DG Competition)

Further Reading

• Information about First letter to the addressees in EU Competition Procedure, 3rd. Edition, Edited by Luis Ortiz Blanco (Oxford University Press)