Access to Information Held by EU-Institutions for Economic Operators and National Courts

Abstract

In the July issue of GTCJ several authors have analysed how access to information in anti-dumping/subsidy proceedings can be improved, the introduction of Administrative Protective Orders ( APO) being one alternative, recourse to the hearing officer and sincere cooperation with national courts being others. This article focuses on a specific issue in this context, namely cases where an economic operator is, according to the wording of the anti-dumping Regulation, not entitled to access to the non-confidential file, and is not granted access under the Transparency Regulation with the argument that this would render the anti-dumping Regulation ineffective. As a last resort, the possibility for national courts to request information from the Commission, as already addressed by Rovetta and Gambardella in GTCJ 2014, p. 336, will be discussed.