On 14 April 2026, Jean‑François Bellis and Steve Ross appeared before the General Court of the European Union in the first case challenging an inspection decision of the European Commission under Article 14 of the FSR (Case T-284/24, Nuctech Warsaw Company Limited and InsTech Netherlands v Commission).

The Commission had carried out inspections at the premises of Nuctech’s Dutch and Polish subsidiaries. Its concern was that the subsidiaries might have benefited from foreign financial contributions capable of distorting the EU internal market in relation to threat detection systems manufactured in the European Union and related activities.

A central issue before the Court (sitting in extended composition) was whether the Commission was entitled to require, under threat of fines and periodic penalty payments, Nuctech’s EU subsidiaries to place a legal hold on and to produce 21 mailboxes archived in tempore non suspecto on Nuctech’s servers located in China. Under applicable Chinese regulations, exporting such data outside China required prior approval by the competent authority.

The case thus raised novel legal questions of whether such data could be considered “accessible to the entity subject to the inspection” within the meaning of Article 14(2)(b) FSR as well as whether the Commission’s requests were compatible with public international law.

The VBB team also included Andreas Reindl, Claire Simpson, Giovanni Pregno and Evangelos Kalogiannis.