Judgment_paragraph 178 · JFE Engineering Corp., formerly NKK Corp., Nippon Steel Corp., JFE Steel Corp. and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd v Commission of the European Communities (T-67/00, T-68/00, T-71/00, T-78/00)

178In the latter situation, it is necessary to take account of the principle of the presumption of innocence resulting in particular from Article 6(2) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR), which is one of the fundamental rights which, according to the case-law of the Court of Justice and as reaffirmed in the preamble to the Single European Act, by Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union and by Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union proclaimed on 7 December 2000 in Nice (OJ 2000 C 364, p 1), are protected in the Community legal order. Given the nature of the infringements in question and the nature and degree of severity of the ensuing penalties, the principle of the presumption of innocence applies in particular to the procedures relating to infringements of the competition rules applicable to undertakings that may result in the imposition of fines or periodic penalty payments (see, to that effect, in particular the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights of 21 February 1984 in Öztürk, Series A No 73, and of 25 August 1987 in Lutz, Series A No 123-A, and of the Court of Justice in Case C-199/92 P Hüls v Commission [1999] ECR I-4287, paragraphs 149 and 150, and Case C-235/92 P Montecatini v Commission [1999] ECR I-4539, paragraphs 175 and 176).