194By its seventh plea, the applicant takes issue with recitals 17 to 22 of the contested decision. Recitals 17 to 19 of the decision are set out in paragraph 170 above and recital 22 is set out in paragraph 132 above. Recitals 20 and 21 of the contested decision are worded as follows:(20) Lastly, the applicant indicated on several websites that the Union is a target market for the company, and its ceramic tiles are described as being “EC certified since 2004” and “popular in Europe”. Therefore, the applicant has been able to export ceramic tiles to the Union since at least 2004. Thus, it seems unlikely that the applicant, after obtaining the necessary EC certificate to export the product concerned to the Union, would not have exported to the Union until 2012, [that] is, eight years after obtaining the certificate.(21) The applicant argued that the existence of an EC certification was no proof of exports during the [initial] investigation period, and that the EC certificate had been used for sales to African customers, as well as to Korea, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, who value the EC standard as a quality label. However, this does not affect the Commission’s reasoning in recital 20 above. Even if the allegation that the EC certificate could be a useful marketing tool in certain countries was true, it seems unlikely that this would have in itself justified the costly process [of obtaining] EC certification if the intention was not to start exporting to the Union. Indeed, such process implies, among other things, adaptations to the production process, new testing routines, possibly design changes for [the application of] the marking and certification by a third party. On the other hand, the EC certificate is mandatory for export sales to the Union, as ceramic tiles are construction products falling under the scope of [Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 laying down harmonised conditions for the marketing of construction products and repealing Council Directive 89/106/EEC (OJ 2011 L 88, p. 5)]. This argument was thus rejected.’