The new Belgian Competition Act, which entered into force on 6 September 2013, introduced a possibility to appeal decisions of the Belgian competition authority to use documents obtained in the context of dawn raids.
According to the new Act, such decisions may be appealed when the prosecutor submits his statement of objections and he uses the obtained documents to substantiate the statement of objections. Parties then have 30 days to lodge their appeal before the Brussels Court of Appeals against the competition authority’s decision to use those documents.
Several undertakings have made use of this possibility to appeal since the new Act entered into force. The Belgian legislature now adopted a new Act of 2 April 2014 whereby if an appeal against the use of such Dawn Raid documents is filed, the time bar periods that apply to infringements of Belgian competition laws are suspended pending the procedure before the Court of Appeals. The new Act of 2 April enters into force 31 May 2013.
