Brussels, 12/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has established that aid granted in 1999 and 2000 to Spanish shipyards, should be reimbursed. The Commission pointed out on Wednesday that aid cannot be authorised, following the measures already approved during restructuring in 1997, which allowed for aid of around EUR 1.38 bn on the condition that no other aid of this kind was granted.
The aid in question involves the State holding company Sociedad Estatal de Participationes Industriales (SEPI) and its subsidiaries Astilleros Españoles (AESA), the former holding company of the public shipyards, and Bazán, the military shipbuilding group. These transactions resulted in the July 2000 merger of all public Spanish yards into Bazán, which then changed name to IZAR. Since the Commission suspected that these transactions might have contained state aid, it opened a formal investigation on 12 July 2000, was extended on 28 November 2001 and further extended on 27 May 2003 (EUROPE 28 May 2003 p 13). Based on the facts of the formal investigation the Commission concludes that transactions entailed state aid:
An excess purchase price paid by SEPI when AESA sold three shipyards in 1999. According to the Commission's calculation the purchase price paid by SEPI contained an aid element of € 55.9 million;
A 1999 SEPI loan amounting to € 192.1 million to the three shipyards Cadiz, Juliana and Manises;
A capital injection by SEPI of € 252.4 million to AESA in 2000, benefiting the remaining ASEAN civil shipyards Puerto Real, Sestao and Sevilla.
As a consequence the Commission ordered that IZAR paid back the loan of € 192.1 million to SEPI (which as paid back in 2000), the sum to be reimbursed by IZAR will amount to €308.3 million. The Commission is aware that the consequences of this decision may be serious for IZAR, its shipyards and its employees but Commission spokesperson Tilman Lueder said they were justified given the complaints from rival shipyards.
In order to tackle the social consequences, Mr Lueder indicated that the Commission had considered "quite generous ways" for repayment and which would not put the viability of the enterprise in peril. Spain also has two months to set out repayment methods. The spokesperson indicated that the Commission was aware of the social consequences of this decision, which threatened 20,000 jobs and measures were being studied regarding training and employment recycling.