Brussels, 03/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission on Wednesday decided to open a formal examination procedure regarding Danish state investments in the public transport company Combus. Between 1999 and 2000, Denmark granted this company a sum of 63.7 million as a capital injection to prevent the company going bankrupt. In March 2001, the Commission authorised this restructuring aid before the Court of First Instance contradicted its decision in March 2004 and annulled its decision to authorise these investments.
With this new procedure; the Commission's competition services will start the examination of the dossier from scratch. First of all, the Commission will assess the Danish state's behaviour to determine if it constitutes state aid. If the government did not act as a private investor would have done, it will have to check if the state aid is in accordance with Community provisions, particularly the guidelines on restructuring aid for companies in difficulty. In its initial decision, the Commission considered that two-thirds of the measures were in accordance with European rules on state aid linked to public service functions in the transport sector, and that the rest of the subsidy corresponded to criteria fixed for restructuring aid.