Brussels, 11/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - With its ruling on 11 September in case T-565/08 (Corsica Ferries France/Commission), the EU's General Court annulled the decision taken by the European Commission in 2008 to approve aid measures taken in 2002 and 2006 by the French State in favour of the Société Nationale Corse-Méditerranée (SNCM), which has since been privatised. The General Court found that the Commission committed manifest errors of assessment in finding that, firstly, certain measures were compatible with the common market and, secondly, that some measures did not constitute state aid likely to distort competition.
In its decision of July 2008 (2009/611/EC), the Commission had considered that the 2002 capital investment of Compagnie générale maritime et financière (CGMF - itself held at 100% by the French state which held 80% of the company at the time) in SNCM of €76 million (€53.48 million in the form of public service bonds and the remaining €22.52 million as aid for restructuring) was compatible with the common market. It similarly considered that the measures of the 2006 privatisation plan did not constitute state aid. Those measures include a recapitalisation of SNCM for the sum of €158 million, an additional capital investment by the CGMF in the amount of €8.75 million and, finally, an advance on a current account in the amount of €38.5 million aimed at financing a possible social plan. Corsica Ferries France, SNCM's main competitor, brought an action before the General Court for annulment of that decision.
The General Court ruled in favour of Corsica Ferries. The Commission, the Court said, did not correctly assess what a private investor would have done in similar circumstances. By approving the recapitalisation of €158 million as a measure not constituting state aid, the European institution did not show that the payment of additional redundancy payments was a practice sufficiently established among private business persons or that that conduct of the French State, in the present case, was motivated by a reasonable likelihood of drawing indirect material profit, even in the long term (by preventing, for example, a worsening of the social climate within public undertakings). By approving the capital investment of CGMF in the amount of €8.75 million, together with the capital invested by the private companies which took over SNCM (Capital Partners and Veolia), the Commission did not take all relevant factors (especially yields) into account. By approving aid to individuals in the amount of €38.5 million, it committed an error of assessment. Such aid granted an economic advantage to SNCM and the very fact that a measure pursues a social aim is not sufficient for it to avoid being classified as state aid. Finally, the Commission's analysis of the cost of restructuring of €22.52 million was not validly substantiated insofar as it was based on the fact that the measures provided for in the 2006 plan did not involve state aid.
It is likely that, further to this ruling, aid will have to be reimbursed, at least in part. (FG/transl.jl)