Defense against an unlawful request of the Office for the Protection of Competition to provide information
Abstract
In response to the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in case of Delta Pekárny an amendment of the Act on Protection of Competition was adopted for the purpose to expressly grant the investigated entities the opportunity to defend themselves by action at court against on-site inspections conducted by the Office for the Protection of Competition in the their premises in order to allow immediate judicial review of the particular inspection. However another investigative power vested in the Office in the form of requesting information from the investigated entities remained without explicit defense options.
The current question is whether and how can the addressees of the requests for information defend themselves against possible illegal requests for information. Taking into consideration the recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union this article analyses the means of defense against illegal requests for information within the Czech law.