On Thursday 12 March, the General Court of the European Union annulled the Commission's decision on aid measures in favour of the Spanish football clubs Valencia CF and Elche CF (cases T-732/16 and T-901/16). In the opinion of the General Court, the decision “is vitiated by a number of manifest errors of assessment”.
Between 2009 and 2010, the Instituto Valenciano de Finanzas granted a number of guarantees to associations linked to three Spanish professional football clubs from the Autonomous Community of Valencia, Valencia CF, Hércules CF and Elche CF. Those guarantees were intended to cover the bank loans taken out by those associations. In Valencia CF’s case, the guarantee granted was increased in 2010 in order to cover the increase of the underlying bank loan.
In July 2016, the Commission found that those measures constituted unlawful state aid and ordered their recovery.
The three clubs each brought an action before the General Court of the EU with a view to annulling the Commission’s decision. On 20 March 2019, the General Court annulled the Commission’s decision in relation to Hércules CF (see EUROPE 12020/24). The General Court has done the same today, Thursday 12 March, in relation to Valencia CF and Elche CF.
With regard to Club Valencia CF, the General Court found that the Commission made a manifest error of assessment by finding that no equivalent guarantee premium could be found on the market. It also considered that the Commission did not sufficiently support the finding that there was no market price for a similar non-guaranteed loan “due to the limited number of observations of similar transactions on the market”. The General Court found that those errors vitiate the Commission’s assessment of the value of the counter-guarantees provided by the Fundación Valencia and, consequently, its calculation of the amount of the aid arising from the increase of the guarantee.
The General Court also found that the Commission’s assessment of the existence of an advantage from which Elche CF benefits is vitiated by manifest errors.
To consult the judgments in languages other than English, go to: http://bit.ly/2IEOQgK (Valencia CF), and http://bit.ly/2IFDqtd (Elche CF) (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)