64As regards, first, the argument by which the appellant complains that the General Court applied to the publication of information communicated for the purposes of obtaining leniency a rule which may not be transposed to that context, it must be pointed out that information which was secret or confidential, but which is at least five years old, must as a rule, on account of the passage of time, be considered historical and therefore as having lost its secret or confidential nature unless, exceptionally, the party relying on that nature shows that, despite its age, that information still constitutes essential elements of its commercial position or that of interested third parties. Those considerations, which give rise to a rebuttable presumption, are valid both in the context of requests for confidential treatment in respect of parties intervening in actions before the EU Courts and in the context of requests for confidentiality with a view to the publication by the Commission of a decision finding an infringement of competition law.
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