Article 13 — Confidentiality

1. Information received pursuant to this Regulation shall be used only for the purpose for which it was requested. 2. Information of a confidential nature and information provided on a confidential basis received pursuant to this Regulation shall not be disclosed without the express consent of the supplier of such information. 3. Each request for confidentiality shall state the reasons why the information should be confidential. Interested parties that provide confidential information shall be required to provide non-confidential summaries thereof. Those summaries shall be sufficiently detailed to permit a reasonable understanding of the substance of the confidential information. In exceptional circumstances, such interested parties may indicate that it is not possible to summarise the information. In such cases, the interested parties shall provide a statement of the reasons why a summary is not possible. However, if it appears that a request for confidentiality is unjustified and if the supplier of the information wishes neither to make it public nor to authorise its disclosure in general terms or in the form of a summary, the information concerned may be disregarded. 4. If information regarding production, production capacity, employment, wages, volume and value of domestic sales or average price is presented on a confidential basis, the Commission shall ensure that meaningful non-confidential summaries disclosing at least aggregated data or, in cases in which the disclosure of aggregated data would endanger the confidentiality of the company’s data, indexes for each period of 12 months under investigation are submitted, so as to ensure the appropriate right of defence of the interested parties. In this regard, requests for confidentiality should be considered in situations in which particular market or Union industry structures so justify it. This provision shall not prevent the presentation of more detailed non-confidential summaries. 5. Requests for confidentiality shall not be warranted in respect of information regarding basic technical and quality standards or uses of the product concerned. Requests for confidentiality in respect of information regarding the identity of the applicants and other known manufacturing companies not part of the request shall be warranted only in exceptional circumstances, which shall be duly justified by the Commission. In that regard, mere allegations shall not suffice for justifying confidentiality requests. If the identity of the applicants cannot be disclosed, the Commission shall disclose the total number of producers included in the Union industry and the proportion of the production that the applicants represent in relation to the total production of the Union industry. 6. Information shall in any case be considered confidential if its disclosure is likely to have a significantly adverse effect upon the supplier or source of that information. 7. Paragraphs 1 to 6 shall not preclude reference by the Union authorities to general information, and in particular to the reasons for which decisions were taken pursuant to this Regulation. The Union authorities shall, however, take into account the legitimate interest of natural and legal persons concerned that their business secrets should not be disclosed.