Broad requests, narrow room to resist: General Court confirms Commission's wide-ranging document request powers in Vivendi and Lagardère

The Commission routinely requires parties to produce vast numbers of internal documents, sometimes running into the millions. Sweeping data requests are not only common in competition investigations, but also in investigations under EU FSR, DMA and merger control proceedings. The General Court’s (the Court) judgments of 3 June 2026 in Vivendi SE v European Commission (T-1097/23) and Lagardère SA v European Commission (T-1119/23) examine two such requests in the context of an investigation into alleged gun-jumping and provide a useful roadmap for how the legality of such requests is — and can be — challenged.

Vivendi and Lagardère challenged the Commission’s broad data requests, which Vivendi estimated required disclosing tens of thousands of documents, on seven grounds, ranging from misuse of powers to breach of fundamental rights. Although Vivendi initially obtained partial interim relief suspending the obligation to produce the documents, the Court ultimately dismissed both challenges and reaffirmed the Commission’s wide discretion in issuing such requests, stopping short of giving the Commission an outright carte blanche, but coming close.

The Commission wants to see it all: Four years of messages, fifteen individuals, and one hundred search terms

Vivendi SE, the French media and entertainment group linked to the Bolloré Group, acquired Lagardère SA, a French media and publishing group, in a deal that became one of the most politically charged media transactions in recent French history, attracting intense scrutiny from press freedom organisations and regulators alike. The Commission cleared the deal following a Phase 2 investigation on 9 June 2023, subject to conditions, principally the divestiture of Vivendi's book publishing business and Gala magazine. However, because the condition was subject to an upfront buyer requirement, Vivendi remained subject to a standstill obligation until the Commission approved the buyer and sale terms, meaning it could not yet implement the merger. Breach of that obligation can lead to fines of up to 10% of group-wide worldwide turnover.

The Commission suspected Vivendi of doing exactly that, including by influencing journalistic appointments and dismissals at Lagardère, shaping editorial choices, and placing individuals linked to the Bolloré Group on Lagardère’s board. In July 2023, it opened a formal investigation against Vivendi for alleged violations of the notification obligation, the standstill obligation, and the conditions attached to the clearance decision of 9 June 2023. 

On 19 September 2023, the Commission issued two formal information requests, one to Vivendi, the other to Lagardère. The broad request addressed to Vivendi targeted fifteen named individuals, including senior management and card-holding journalists, required the application of approximately one hundred search terms across emails, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and SMS messages and deleted files still recoverable from IT systems produced over nearly four years, and extended to personal devices used at least once for professional purposes. 

As is usual, Vivendi and Lagardère were able to withhold legally privileged documents. The Commission also introduced specific safeguards for journalistic sources, modelled on the EU legal privilege procedure: custodians with press cards could review documents, identify protected source information, and either redact it or withdraw the document entirely. Beyond these carve-outs, however, all responsive documents had to be handed over, regardless of their ultimate relevance. In practice, this means countless personal and private conversations are likely to have been provided to the Commission, simply because they were triggered by the search terms and irrespective of whether they were relevant to the proceedings.

The burden imposed on companies by such requests is immense, and falls on them regardless of whether the underlying suspicions are ultimately borne out. Companies must create large document databases and review every responsive document to assess whether it can be withheld or redacted, a costly and resource-intensive exercise, even before the substantive work of building a defence can begin. These costs escalate where the request is excessively broad in its choice of custodians, search terms or time period. Vivendi and Lagardère both went on to challenge the Commission's information requests before the General Court.

The Court’s “laissez-faire” approach and what this means in practice

The Court missed the chance to narrow the Commission's far-reaching approach: it dismissed both challenges, but set out important guidance on the legal standard against which Commission information requests can be measured.

Reasoning requirements are modest. Confirming long-standing principles from cases such as HeidelbergCement (C-247/14 P) and Qualcomm (C-466/19 P), the Court held that the Commission need only set out the purpose of the investigation. It does not need to explain why each individual search term, custodian, or time period was chosen. Here, the decision described the specific types of conduct under investigation, which the Court found to be sufficient to exclude any suggestion that the request was arbitrary or a fishing expedition. 

Proportionality is where companies can push back — but the bar remains high. Vivendi’s proportionality arguments received the most detailed scrutiny, suggesting this is the most promising avenue for narrowing a broad document request. The Court nevertheless upheld the request in full, including its nearly four-year period, broad custodian set, search terms and overall volume. It considered the period justified by Vivendi's first stake in Lagardère in March 2020, found the search terms sufficiently connected to the suspected infringements, and accepted the production of entire conversation threads to understand responsive messages in context. The Court also confirmed the principle from cases such as Cementos Portland Valderrivas (T-296/11) that a large workload is not, in itself, disproportionate.

That said, the Commission must be able to articulate a reasonable connection between each category of information and the conduct under investigation. Challenging specific custodians, narrowing search terms, or contesting the time period can yield results, even if wholesale challenges are unlikely to succeed. Notably, the Commission itself removed one custodian from scope during the proceedings following pushback from Vivendi.

Impossibility of compliance is a very high bar. Vivendi argued it could not produce documents held by the Bolloré Group, which controls Vivendi rather than the reverse. The Court was unmoved: Vivendi had in fact produced those documents, proving compliance was not impossible. This confirmed the principle from Scuola Elementare Maria Montessori (Joined Cases C-622/16 P to C-624/16 P) that only an obligation that is objectively and absolutely impossible to perform from the moment it is imposed can invalidate a decision.

The Court also dismissed Vivendi’s argument that producing documents containing personal information risked exposing it to sanctions under French criminal and labour law. It did so on procedural grounds, finding the claim insufficiently substantiated, rather than engaging with it on substance. This matches the Court’s approach in Nuctech (T-284/24 R), where interim claims that producing FSR dawn raid documents would violate Chinese law were rejected as unsubstantiated, although the main proceedings are still ongoing, with a judgment expected in 2026.

Personal phones are not a safe space. The Court acknowledged that requiring production of documents from personal devices constitutes a serious interference with the right to privacy, as entire conversation threads can reveal sensitive aspects of individuals' private lives. Nevertheless, it found the interference justified: the Commission's investigative powers would be rendered ineffective if companies could refuse production simply because documents were stored on personal devices. There is also no mechanism for individuals to withhold personal messages that fall within the search parameters. However, the Commission implemented certain safeguards, including encrypting sensitive documents and establishing a virtual data room procedure, under which such documents are reviewed by a limited number of Commission officials solely to assess their relevance before entering the case file. These measures may offer some comfort, but they do not alter the fundamental reality that vast amounts of private communications must first be produced before any relevance assessment can take place.

Key takeaways

While it remains to be seen whether Vivendi or Lagardère will appeal the judgments, the following takeaways can already be drawn:

• Gun-jumping remains an enforcement priority for the Commission. Parties should carefully review any integration planning or pre-closing conduct while the standstill obligation remains in force. This is even more so as the case law shows how broadly the standstill obligation can apply: Ernst & Young (C-633/16) established that conduct contributing to a lasting change of control can amount to early implementation; Canon (T-609/19) applied this strictly to multi-stage warehousing structures (see our blog here); and Altice (C-746/21 P) confirmed that even certain pre-closing consent rights and information exchanges can breach the rules (see our blog here).
• While the bar for successfully challenging an information request in court is high, proportionality arguments targeted at specific custodians, search terms, or time periods offer the most realistic route to narrowing them. In practice, the Commission is often open to refining these parameters.
• As the lines between professional and personal use of phones continue to blur, more private communications risk falling within scope of sweeping data requests. The Court upheld the Commission's approach that a personal device falls within scope if it has been used for professional communications even once. Companies are therefore well advised to enforce a strict separation between professional and personal devices, to limit the volume of personal material that may be swept up in future requests.