Recent Judgments Regarding Transparency and Access to Documents in the Field of Competition Law: Where Does the Court of Justice of the EU Strike the Balance?

Abstract

After a brief overview of the rules applicable to access to the documents under the Transparency Regulation (1049/2001), and those applicable to access to the Commission file under competition law, this article analyses the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the EU concerning the application of the Transparency Regulation in competition cases. It argues that there is tension between the recent case law of the General Court and that of the Court of Justice, as the former appears to interpret the exceptions to the right of access to documents strictly while the latter appears to take a more holistic approach and recognises the need to interpret these exceptions so as not to deprive other rules (such as the rules on access to the file in State aid cases, the data protection rules, the Statute of the Court of Justice and the EU Courts' Rules of Procedure) of their ‘effet utile’.