The Court of Justice of the EU dismissed in its entirety (judgment C-440/22 P), on Thursday 11 January, the appeal lodged by the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air Hungary against the judgment of the General Court validating rescue aid granted by Romania to the national airline TAROM in the form of a repayable loan of €36.66 million.
The Court thus confirms the judgment of the General Court of 4 May 2022 (T-718/20 - see EUROPE 12945/20), which considered this aid to be compatible with the internal market insofar as it was intended to prevent social hardship or market failure in the event of interruption of the service provided by TAROM.
In particular, the European judges reaffirmed that the service provided by TAROM can be described as “important” (within the meaning of point 44(b) of the guidelines on State aid for rescue and restructuring), regardless of the fact that the relevant market is “relatively limited”, since its interruption would be detrimental to the connectivity and economic situation of the Romanian regions, which are served exclusively by this company.
The Court also rejected the other arguments put forward by Wizz Air concerning the possibility of TAROM being replaced by its competitors on domestic routes operated exclusively by that company (the General Court had upheld the Commission’s assessment that such replacement was “unlikely” in its decision authorising the aid), the repeated provision of state subsidies to the company (see EUROPE 12945/20) as well as all the other arguments put forward by Wizz Air.
Link to the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/acx (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)