Luxembourg, 24/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The sixth chamber of the European Court of justice over which Judge Claus Gulmann presides has rejected the appeal by British Steel (now Corus UK) for the annulment of the ruling of the Court of First Instance (CFI) of 24 October 1997 (see EUROPE of 25 October 1997). The Court confirmed the 1997 CFI's analysis: "British Steel could not legitimately expect that a given legal situation should change, whereas the economic conditions of the steel industry are undergoing changes demanding, if need be, one-off measures of adaptation".
The Court of First Instance had confirmed the 1994 European Commission's decision by which the latter authorised aid to the restructuring of the large Spanish steel group (CSI) and Italian (Ilva) in view of their privatization. The competitors of these groups, including British Steel, considered that this decision was taken in breach of the General Code on aid to the steel industry (see next article).