유럽연합의 리니언시 자료의 비밀보호에 관한 검토

Protection of information provided under cartel leniency program in EU has undergone a few stages of change. At first stage, it focused prohibition of leakage about identity of leniency applicant and proceeded to protection from discovery of U.S. civil court. After revising commission notice on cartel leniency program in 2006, the present point of interest in this subject is a conflict between right of access to leniency information by victims of cartel and protection of information in cartel leniency program. In Pfleiderer and its succession Donau cases, European Court of Justice ruled that the provisions of European Union law on cartels must be interpreted as not precluding a cartel victims and the courts of the Member States must determine the conditions of such access by weighing the interests protected by European Union law in case by case. With these cases context, 2014 Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council mainly deals with the right to compensation for harm caused by infringements of Union competition law for private enforcement. However, it covers protection of leniency information for effective public cartel enforcement. Such experiences and examples of EU will be useful for our competition authority to prepare some measures in this subject. It can provide courts some standards for balancing conflicting interests and also suggest leniency applicants some predictability about disclosure of information.