26.4.2021

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 148/7

(Case C-57/21)

(2021/C 148/09)

Language of the case: Czech

Referring court

Parties to the main proceedings

Applicant: České dráhy, a.s.

Other parties to the proceedings: RegioJet a.s., Česká republika — Ministerstvo dopravy

Questions referred

1.Is an approach whereby a court decides to impose the obligation to disclose evidence, even though proceedings are at the same time being conducted by the Commission for the purposes of the adoption of a decision pursuant to Chapter III of Council Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 (1) of 16 December 2002 on the implementation of the rules on competition laid down in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty (‘the Regulation’), due to which proceedings concerning an action for damages caused by a breach of competition legislation have been suspended on that ground by a court, consistent with the interpretation of Article 5(1) of Directive 2014/104/EU (2) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 November 2014 on certain rules governing actions for damages under national law for infringements of the competition law provisions of the Member States and of the European Union (‘the Directive’)?

2.Does the interpretation of Article 6(5)(a) and Article 6(9) of the Directive preclude national legislation that restricts the disclosure of all information submitted in the course of proceedings at the request of a competition authority, even if the information concerned is such that a party is obliged to create and keep (or creates and keeps) it on the basis of other legislation, regardless of the proceedings concerning a breach of the competition legislation?

3.Can the closure of proceedings ‘otherwise’, within the meaning of Article 6(5) of the Directive, consist of the fact that a national competition authority suspended its proceedings as soon as the European Commission commenced proceedings for the purposes of adopting a decision pursuant to Chapter III of the Regulation?

4.Having regard to the purpose and goals of the Directive, is an approach by a national court whereby it analogously applies national legislation implementing Article 6(7) of the Directive to a category of information such as information pursuant to Article 6(5) of the Directive, that is to say, it decides to order the disclosure of evidence with the proviso that the question whether the evidence contains information that was prepared by a natural or legal person specifically for the proceedings of a competition authority (within the meaning of Article 6(5) of the Directive) is to be examined only after the evidence is disclosed to the court, compliant with Article 5(1) of the Directive in conjunction with Article 6(5) thereof?

5.If the reply to the previous question is in the affirmative, must Article 5(4) of the Directive be interpreted such that effective measures for the protection of confidential information adopted by a court may, before a final evaluation by the court as to whether the evidence disclosed, or any part thereof, falls into the category of evidence under Article 6(5)(a) of the Directive, exclude access to the disclosed evidence by the applicant or other parties to the proceedings and their representatives?

(1) OJ 2003 L 1, p. 1.

(2) OJ 2014 L 349, p. 1.