Art. 7 Identification and protection of confidential information | Conduct of certain Commission proceedings | DMA

This article establishes the Commission's confidentiality framework for information and documents it collects during proceedings.

It sets out the general rule that the Commission will not disclose material containing business secrets or other confidential information, while also detailing the process by which parties can assert confidentiality claims over their documents and how the Commission can challenge those claims.

The article works in close conjunction with Article 8, which governs the specific conditions under which access to the file may nonetheless be granted to certain parties.

Important points:

The Commission is required to protect business secrets and other confidential information from disclosure, but parties must actively identify and substantiate their confidentiality claims within time limits set by the Commission.
If natural or legal persons fail to comply with the Commission's requests to substantiate confidentiality claims or provide redacted versions, the Commission may treat the documents as containing no business secrets or confidential information.
Where the Commission determines that an overriding interest justifies disclosure of information claimed as confidential, it must give the party concerned at least one week to object before proceeding, and may adopt a reasoned decision to disclose.

1. Unless otherwise provided for in Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 or Article 8 of this Regulation and without prejudice to paragraph 6 of this Article, information or documents collected or obtained by the Commission shall not be disclosed or made accessible by the Commission in so far as they contain business secrets or other confidential information of any natural or legal person.
1. When requesting information pursuant to Article 21 of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 or, carrying out interviews pursuant to Article 22 of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925, the Commission shall inform the relevant natural or legal persons that, by providing information to the Commission, they agree that access to that information may be granted pursuant to Article 8 of this Regulation. In any event, the provisions of Article 8 shall apply to any document spontaneously submitted to the Commission under Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 or this Regulation.
1. Without prejudice to paragraph 2, the Commission may require natural or legal persons who are the originators of documents in its file to identify the documents, statements or parts thereof which they consider to contain business secrets or other confidential information. The Commission may also set a time-limit for natural or legal persons to identify any part of a Commission decision which in their view contains business secrets or other confidential information.
1. The Commission may set a time-limit for natural or legal persons to:
  1. substantiate in a specific manner their claims for business secrets and other confidential information for each individual document, statement or part thereof;
  2. provide the Commission with a non-confidential version of the documents or statements in which the business secrets and other confidential information are redacted in a clear and intelligible manner;
  3. provide a concise, non-confidential and clear description of each piece of redacted information.
1. If natural or legal persons fail to comply within the time-limit set by the Commission with a request pursuant to paragraph 3 or 4, the Commission may consider that the documents or statements concerned do not contain business secrets or other confidential information.
1. If the Commission determines that certain information that is claimed confidential by a natural or legal person may be disclosed, either because this information does not constitute a business secret or other confidential information, or because there is an overriding interest in its disclosure, it shall inform the natural or legal person concerned that it intends to disclose such information unless it receives objections within one week. Should the natural or legal person in question object, the Commission may adopt a reasoned decision specifying the date after which the information will be disclosed. This date shall not be less than one week from the date of notification. The decision shall be notified to the natural or legal person concerned.
1. Unless otherwise indicated by the Commission, any comments by third parties on a publication or consultation pursuant to Article 8(6), Article 18(5) and (6), Article 19(2) and Article 29(4) of Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 shall be treated as non-confidential. Interested third parties submitting comments shall have the right to request the redaction of the author’s and the sender’s name or other identifying information before the comments are shared with the addressee of the preliminary findings or with any other third party. The Commission may make those comments, or any non-confidential version thereof, publicly available, provided it has indicated this possibility in the context of the publication or consultation.