Brussels, 27/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 21 July, the Court of Justice of the EU rejected the appeal by Alcoa Trasformazioni Srl against a Commission decision of 2006 that the prices paid by two of its factories, at Portovesme and Fusina in Italy, for electricity were “new illegal aid” and against the ruling by the General Court in March 2009 (Case T-332/06) which upheld the decision.
In support of its appeal, Alcoa referred to a 1996 Commission decision that preferential rates offered by electricity supplier Enel to a number of large-scale energy consuming industries in Italy, including Alumix, the previous owner of the two factories in question, did not constitute state aid as they corresponded to the prices that might be expected from a reasonable supplier under normal market conditions. Alcoa argued that the conclusions at the heart of that decision still held good and that considerations surrounding it had not fundamentally changed. Thus, according to Alcoa, the 2006 decision by the Commission was in total contradiction of its 1996 decision. The Commission ought, Alcoa said, to have at the very least applied the procedure that deals with “existing aid” rather than the one on “new aid”. Furthermore, still according to Alcoa, the Commission did not carry out an appropriate appraisal that could allow it to determine that the rates at issue in 2006 gave the two factories an advantage that might be seen as illegal state aid.
In its 2009 judgment, the General Court rejected this argument, stating that the measure considered in the decision against which the appeal had been lodged was a separate measure from the one the Commission had previously considered in the Alumix decision since, once a measure that the Commission has found not to constitute state aid is extended or amended in substance, it can only be examined by the Commission under the rules of procedure that apply to new aid. Alcoa challenged this ruling, claiming that, in finding for the Commission, the General Court had failed to observe the principles of legal certainty and protection of legitimate expectations.
The Court upheld the General Court's ruling, taking the view that the General Court had correctly ruled that the findings of the Commission in the Alumix decision could not legitimately lead Alcoa to believe that the conclusions of that decision could extend to the tariff examined in the decision at issue and that, consequently, the Alumix decision could not give Alcoa legitimate expectation that the conclusions in that decision would be lasting. The General Court had correctly ruled, therefore, that the Commission had not infringed the principle of legitimate expectations with its decision which derived from the procedure on new aid. With regard to the principle of legal certainty, the Court noted that Alcoa had merely cited this principle without making clear the reasoning behind the ruling against which the appeal had been lodged or the General Court's analysis that might be claimed to have infringed it. (F.G./transl.rt)