13.8.2011   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 238/22

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annul the Commission’s inspection decision of 14 March 2011 notified on 29 March 2011;

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annul all measures taken on the basis of the inspections, which took place on the basis of that unlawful decision;

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in particular order the Commission to return all the copies of documents made during the inspections, on pain of the annulment of the future Commission decision by the General Court; and

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order the Commission to pay the costs.

1.

First plea: infringement of the fundamental right to inviolability of one’s premises by reason of lack of prior judicial authorisation.

2.

Second plea: infringement of the fundamental right to an effective legal remedy by reason of the lack of possibility of prior judicial review of the inspection decision, both from the factual and the legal point of view.

3.

Third plea: infringement of defence rights by reason of a disproportionately wide and non-specific subject-matter of the inspection (‘fishing expedition’).

4.

Fourth plea: infringement of the principle of proportionality. The inspection decision is disproportionate, since the rebate system for electromotive power has been practised by the applicants for years and has been monitored by the authorities and the German courts many times and found compatible with competition law, and since the answer to the question whether the rebate system is ‘objectively justified’, which the Commission regards as the decisive question, could have been answered by a less invasive measure, namely a request for information.