French Commercial code
In forceI.-An applicant who has applied to the European Commission for total or partial exemption from financial penalties, either by allocating a place in the order of arrival with a view to benefiting from such an exemption, or by filing a full application, may, if this application refers to a prohibited practice covering the territories of more than three Member States, submit to the Autorité de la concurrence a summary application concerning the same practice.
I.-The summary application referred to in I, which is subject to the conditions laid down in the first three paragraphs of Article R. 464-5, includes the information referred to in 1° and 3° to 6° of III. II - The summary application referred to in I, which is subject to the conditions set out in the first three paragraphs of Article R. 464-5, includes the information referred to in 1° and 3° to 6° of III of Article R. 464-5-3, as well as a reference to the Member States where the evidence of the practice in question is likely to be found.
The clarifications that the Autorité de la Concurrence has made to the summary application are set out below. The clarifications that the Competition Authority may request in response to a summary request may only concern the matters referred to in the previous paragraph.
III. III - When it receives a summary request, the Competition Authority will check whether it has already received another request, summary or complete, from another applicant concerning the same practice. In the absence of such a request, and if it considers that the summary request submitted to it contains the information referred to in the first paragraph of II of this Article, the general rapporteur or a rapporteur appointed by him will inform the applicant that his request has been accepted.
IV. IV -Where the European Commission has informed the Competition Authority that it does not intend to investigate the case in whole or in part, the applicant may submit a complete request to the General Rapporteur of the Competition Authority. Exceptionally, where this is strictly necessary for the delimitation of a case or for its allocation, the rapporteur general or a rapporteur appointed by him may invite the applicant to submit a complete application before the European Commission has informed the Competition Authority that it does not intend to investigate the case in whole or in part.
V.-The rapporteur general of the Competition Authority may submit a complete application to the European Commission before the European Commission has informed the Competition Authority that it does not intend to investigate the case in whole or in part. V.-The general rapporteur of the Competition Authority may set the applicant a maximum time limit for filing a complete application and for providing the corresponding information.
Where the applicant files its full application within the time limit, it is deemed to have been filed when the summary application was filed, provided that the summary application relates to the same products and territories and to the same duration of the practice at issue as the application filed with the European Commission, which may have been updated.
