82In adopting such guidelines and announcing, through their publication, that they will apply to the cases to which they relate, the Commission imposes a limit on the exercise of that discretion and cannot, as a general rule, depart from those guidelines, at the risk of being found to be in breach of general principles of law, such as equal treatment or the protection of legitimate expectations (judgment of 19 July 2016, Kotnik and Others, C‑526/14, EU:C:2016:570, paragraph 40 and the case-law cited).
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