In a judgment handed down on Wednesday 20 December (Case T-415/21), the General Court of the European Union rejected Banca Popolare di Bari’s claim for compensation in respect of a European Commission decision of December 2015 which wrongly considered that the preventive support intervention by the FITD fund in favour of Banca Tercas, which Banca Popolare di Bari absorbed, constituted unlawful state aid (see EUROPE 12219/23).
The General Court pointed out that the Union must make good the damage caused by its institutions. The liability of the company depends on three conditions being met: - a sufficiently serious breach of EU law conferring rights on individuals; - the occurrence of damage; - the existence of a causal link between the breach and the damage caused.
The European Court found that the TFEU (Article 107), which defines ‘State aid incompatible with the internal market’, must be qualified as a rule of which the purpose is to confer rights on individuals such as Banca Popolare di Bari as the beneficiary of the aid measures at issue, which were wrongly classified as State aid and the amount of which was recovered after the Commission’s decision. This decision was subsequently annulled in March 2021 by the Court of Justice of the EU (case C-425/19 P - see EUROPE 12669/27).
However, the General Court finds that the condition for liability to arise relating to the existence of a sufficiently serious breach of that rule is lacking, since the irregularity committed by the Commission is not unrelated to the prudent conduct of an institution responsible for ensuring the application of the competition rules in a particularly complex context.
The General Court adds, with regard to the examination of the existence of a direct causal link, that the Commission’s conduct is not the direct and determining cause of the damage allegedly suffered, which consists of the loss of bank deposits and customers.
See the General Court’s judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/a78 (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)