91Since the mere fact that the Commission did not discover an unlawful cartel, which for obvious reasons is intentionally secret, cannot be treated as negligence on its part in the light of the supervisory task entrusted to it by the Treaty, it must be held that the fact that, in the present case, the Commission only began the investigation into the relevant infringements five years and a few months after those infringements had come to an end, and that the Decision was not adopted until seven and a half years after that date, does not prove any infringement of the principle of legal certainty.
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