The Commission shall seek information and views regarding the Union's economic interests in specific goods or services or in specific sectors, in the application of this Regulation, through a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union or through other suitable public communication means, indicating the period within which input is to be submitted. The Commission shall take the input received into account.

Information received pursuant to this Regulation shall be used only for the purpose for which it was requested.

Neither the European Parliament, nor the Council, nor the Commission, nor Member States, nor their respective officials shall reveal any information of a confidential nature received pursuant to this Regulation, without specific permission from the supplier of such information.

The supplier of information may request that information supplied be treated as confidential. In such cases, it shall be accompanied by a non-confidential summary which presents the information in a generalised form or a statement of the reasons why the information cannot be summarised.

If it appears that a request for confidentiality is not justified and if the supplier is unwilling either to make the information public or to authorise its disclosure in generalised or summary form, the information in question may be disregarded.

Paragraphs 2 to 5 shall not preclude the disclosure of general information by the institutions of the Union and the authorities of the Member States. Such disclosure must take into account the legitimate interest of the parties concerned in not having their business secrets divulged.