Court of Justice of the European Communities (including Court of First Instance Decisions)

ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE COURT

26 September 2019 (*)

(Intervention — Confidentiality)

In Case C‑213/19,

ACTION for failure to fulfil obligations under Article 258 TFEU, brought on 7 March 2019,

European Commission, represented by L. Flynn and F. Clotuche-Duvieusart, acting as Agents,

applicant,

v

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, represented by Z. Lavery, F. Shibli and S. Brandon, acting as Agents, J. Eadie QC, I. Rogers QC and R. Hill, S. Pritchard and T. Sebastian, Barristers,

defendant,

THE PRESIDENT OF THE COURT,

having regard to the proposal of A. Prechal, Judge-Rapporteur,

after hearing the Advocate General, P. Pikamäe,

makes the following

Order

1        By documents lodged at the Court Registry on 14 June, 19 June, 20 June, 24 June, 27 June and 4 July 2019, respectively, on the basis of the first paragraph of Article 40 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Article 130 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, the Portuguese Republic, the Slovak Republic, the Hellenic Republic, the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Estonia and the Kingdom of Belgium requested leave to intervene in the present proceedings in support of the form of order sought by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

2        In accordance with the first paragraph of Article 40 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, which provides that Member States and institutions of the European Union may intervene in cases before the Court, those applications to intervene must be granted.

3        By letters lodged at the Court Registry on 5 and 9 July 2019, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland requested, on the basis of Article 131 of the Rules of Procedure, that, in relation to the Member States which have applied to intervene in the case, confidential treatment be accorded to certain passages of the annexes to the application (Annex A4, page 186, paragraph 2.3.3, and Annex A32, page 994, footnotes 67 and 71) and to certain passages of the defence (page 43, footnote 160) and Annex B5 to the defence (page 258, footnotes 67 and 71), in which information that may enable a certain natural person to be identified and the names of other persons appear, on the ground, in essence, that, in the case of the natural person covered by the request for confidential treatment, that person could be the subject of reprisals if his/her identity were revealed and, in the case of the other persons concerned, the mention of their names could affect their legitimate commercial interests, whereas disclosure of those names would not be of any benefit to the interveners.

4        The European Commission has not raised objections to that request for confidential treatment.

5        In accordance with Article 131(3) and (4) of the Rules of Procedure, the President of the Court may, at the request of a party and at any stage of the procedure, exclude certain secret or confidential items or documents from the communication, to the interveners, of the procedural documents served on the other parties (see, to that effect, order of the President of the Court of 8 February 2006, Commission v Italy, C‑255/05, EU:C:2006:87, paragraph 5).

6        In the present instance, in the light of the grounds relied on by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in support of its request for confidential treatment of the application and the defence, which justify preserving the confidentiality of certain information and of the names of certain persons, as referred to in paragraph 3 of the present order, and as the omission of that information and those names has no effect on the procedural rights of the interveners in the present proceedings, application of Article 131(3) and (4) of the Rules of Procedure is justified.

7        It follows from the foregoing that the request for confidential treatment submitted by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be granted.

On those grounds, the President of the Court hereby orders:

1.      The Kingdom of Belgium, the Republic of Estonia, the Hellenic Republic, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Latvia, the Portuguese Republic and the Slovak Republic are granted leave to intervene in Case C‑213/19 in support of the form of order sought by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

2.      A period shall be prescribed within which the interveners are to state in writing the pleas relied on in support of the form of order which they seek.

3.      The Registrar shall serve on the interveners a copy of all the procedural documents, with the exception of the application of the European Commission and the defence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

4.      The Registrar shall serve on the interveners a non-confidential version of the Commission’s application and a non-confidential version of the defence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, both as produced by that Member State.

5.      The costs are reserved.

Luxembourg, 26 September 2019.

*      Language of the case: English.

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