Electrolux EU 0561 C Instrukcja Użytkownika Pobierz pdf (Strona 14)

PAGE 14 EC COMPETITION POLICY NEWSLETTER Vol. 1, N° 2, Summer 1994

for reply to the Statement of Objections is too short. In such

a case, the Hearing Officer should decide whether or not an

extension to this deadline should be granted.

- Access

to relevant information. It is important that

undertakings should be confident that the Commission

carries out its responsibilities regarding access to information

carefully, fairly and objectively, and, subject to the

obligations imposed upon it regarding confidentiality,

discloses all documents that may be favourable to the

undertakings concerned in preparing their defence. The

Hearing Officer can play a useful role in this respect. Whilst

it is neither possible nor appropriate that the Hearing Officer

should carry out the initial examination of the file to

determine which documents can and should be sent to the

undertakings concerned, he or she should exercise the

functions of an arbiter once these documents have been sent,

and access to the file has therefore taken place. If, on the

basis of the list of documents in the Commission's file sent

together with the Statement of Objections and of its own

knowledge of the case, the undertaking has reasonable

grounds to believe that it should receive additional

documents, the Hearing Officer should examine any such

request and decide on its merits. Requests would, however,

need to be reasoned and sufficiently specific to enable the

Hearing Officer to carry out this function.

- Right

of third parties to be heard. The Hearing Officer

should also be given the right to decide whether third parties

should be allowed to intervene in procedures concerning

individuals, businesses or associations of businesses. Under

the present rules, natural or legal persons proving sufficient

interest have the right to be heard. The Hearing Officer is

undoubtedly in the best position to decide on their requests.

- Hearings

. Since the Hearing Officer is responsible for

organizing hearings, logic dictates that he should also have

the task of deciding who is to be allowed to speak at

hearings.

- Business

secrets and other confidential information. In

performing the above mentioned tasks, the Hearing Officer

should also be able to decide which items of information

supplied by a firm and contained in the Commission's file

can be communicated to other firms or published. "

On going to press these changes had not yet been adopted by

the Commission, but it is expected that they will be

approved during September.

During the last months, the Commission has also made

considerable progress in a number of legislative areas.

First, regarding

Form A/B, the Commission has now

redrafted the version of the Form that it circulated for

comments earlier this year. This first draft required the

provision of a greater amount of information on notification

for all cases when compared to the Form A/B presently in

force. The objective underlying this approach was to ensure

that the Commission would henceforth dispose of all the

information in the possession of the notifying parties

necessary for and relevant to the Commission's examination

of the case. In this way, the Commission would be able to

continue the process of speeding up its treatment of all cases,

not only those concerning cooperative joint ventures

involving structural change.

However, the unanimous view of the companies and

organisations that submitted comments on this first draft was

that the burden that would be placed on industry by the

obligation to supply information contained in the new Form

outweighed the potential benefits resulting from this

objective. Whilst industry did accept the need to provide

additional information for the joint venture cases in which

the two-month deadline was in force, it considered it

inappropriate to demand this for other cases.

The Commission has taken careful consideration of these

comments, and has decided to divide the Form into two

parts. The first part is to be completed by companies

notifying agreements benefiting from the accelerated

procedure. This part requires the provision of a wide range

of detailed information that in many respects mirrors the

requirements of Form CO, the obligatory Form for notifying

concentrations under the Merger Regulation. The other

section, to be completed when notifying all cases not

benefiting from deadlines, requires the provision of

essentially the same amount of information as is required by

Form A/B presently in force, albeit in a reorganised format.

This new version will be made available for further

comments in September. Those willing a copy should write

or send a fax to:

Mr Helmut SCHRÖTER

Head of Unit IV/A-2

Commission of the European Communities

Rue de la Loi 200

B - 1040 BRUSSELS

Fax: 32.2.295.01.28

Second, the Commission has recently issued for general

consultation the first draft of a new block exemption on

intellectual property (IP) licensing. The Patent Licensing

Regulation will expire at the end of this year, although the

Know-how Regulation still has a few years to run.

Rather than maintain these two separate but more or less

identical Regulations, the Commission proposes to merge the

two into a single IP Licensing Regulation. The proposal does

not, however, cover industrial property licenses such as

trademark licenses. The Commission has dealt with very few

such cases and, given its lack of experience in this field, is

not in a position, at least at present, either to include such

matters within the new Regulation, or to produce a separate

industrial property licensing regulation. Notwithstanding this,

it is hoped that the new approach will simplify matters

significantly.

In its treatment of IP licenses the Commission pursues two

basic goals, one single market goal, one anti-trust goal. With

respect to the single market objective the Commission uses

its competition policy as a weapon to prevent companies

erecting private barriers to trade, by concluding licenses that

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