S.L. 549.141 Art. 8Identification and protection of confidential information.

(1) Any producer of a product or a producer responsibility organisation who submits information or comments to the Authority in the course of an investigation, shall clearly identify any material which it considers to be confidential, giving reasons therefor, and shall provide a separate non-confidential version, where applicable by the date set by the Authority for making its submissions known.

(2) Without prejudice to sub-regulation (1), the Authority may require persons or producers of a product or producer responsibility organisations to submit documents pursuant to these regulations, to identify the documents or parts of documents which they consider to contain business secrets or other confidential information belonging to them and to identify the persons, producers of a product or a producer responsibility organisations to which such documents are to be considered confidential.

(3) The Authority may set a time-limit within which persons, producers of a product or a producer responsibility organisation or any other bodies are to:

(a) substantiate their claim for confidentiality with regard to each individual document or part of such document, statement or part of such statement;

(b) provide the Authority with a non-confidential version of the documents or statements, in which the confidential passages are deleted; and

(c) provide a concise description of each part of the deleted information.

(4) In the event that persons, producers of a product or producer responsibility organisations or any other bodies fail to comply with sub-regulations (1) and (2), the Authority may deem that the documents or statements concerned do not contain confidential information and may consequently assume that the persons, producers of a product or producer responsibility organisations or other bodies have no objections to the disclosure of the documents or statements concerned in their entirety.

(5) Where persons, producers of a product or producer responsibility organisations or any other bodies meet the conditions set out in sub-regulations (1) and (2), the Authority shall:

(a) either provisionally accept the claims which appear justified; or

(b) inform the person, producer of a product or a producer responsibility organisation or any other bodies that it does not agree with the confidentiality claim in whole or in part, where it is apparent that the claim is unjustified.

(6) The Authority may reverse its provisional acceptance of the confidentiality claim in whole or in part at a later stage.

(7) Where the Authority does not agree with the confidentiality claim from the outset or where it takes the view that the provisional acceptance of the confidentiality claim should be reversed, and thus intends to disclose information, the Authority shall inform such person, producer of a product or a producer responsibility organisation or any other body, in writing, of its intention to disclose such information, give its reasons and set a time-limit within which such person, producer of a product or a producer responsibility organisation or any other body may inform the Authority in writing of its views. If, following submission of those views, a disagreement on the confidentiality claim persists, the Authority shall take a decision thereon.