Access to file: The CJEU strikes down an Austrian provision preventing third parties from accessing files assembled by competition authorities during the course of an action for damages when the damage has been caused by anticompetitive practices and, filling the gaps left in the Pfeiderer Judgement, provides guidelines to strike the right balance between the interest of providing access to such file during the course of an action for damages when the damage has been caused by anticompetitive practices and the risk of reducing the efficiency and attractiveness of leniency programs (Donau Chemie)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. After the disappointment legitimately caused by its Pfleiderer judgment of 14 June 2011 (C-360/09), which was mired in a kind of in-between situation leaving room for all interpretations, the Court of Justice of the European Union is finally taking up the challenge of access to the file constituted by the competition authorities in the context of claims for compensation before the courts for damage caused by an anti-competitive practice. It does so - and in what way! - by replying, in Case C-536/11 (Federal Competition Authority v Donau Chemie AG and Others), to a reference for a preliminary ruling from the Oberlandesgericht (Higher Regional Court), Vienna