Judicial review and the protection of privacy rights in dawn raids

Commission inspections pursuant to Article 20(4) of Regulation 1/2003 (i.e. dawn raids) interfere with the privacy rights of companies and individuals. This interference is disproportionate when it is not consistent with the requirements laid down in Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and Article 8 of the European Convention for Human Rights. In its recent judgments in the French Supermarkets cases, the General Court partially annulled four Commission inspection decisions for constituting an arbitrary and unjustified interference with the privacy rights of the inspected companies. The General Court found that the Commission had initiated inspections without having sufficiently serious evidence in its possession. This article examines this finding of the General Court and its practical implications for the protection of companies’ privacy rights in the context of dawn raids. In addition, this article examines possible remedies for challenging the seizure and copying of documents containing personal information of raided companies’ staff during a dawn raid.