Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:1999:545
Date: 1999-11-09
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: State aids;Competition
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal - unfounded
Origin: France

Summary of the Judgment 
Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual 
concern to them — Commission decision declaring aid incompatible with the common 
market — Action brought by bodies representing the employees of the recipient 
undertaking — Inadmissible 
(EC Treaty, Art. 93(2) (now Art. 88(2) EC) and Art. 173, fourth para, (now, after 
amendment, Art. 230 EC, fourth para.)) 
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SUMMARY — CASE C-106/98 P 
Persons other than those to whom a 
decision is addressed may claim to be 
individually concerned within the meaning 
of the fourth paragraph of Article 173 
(now, after, amendment, fourth paragraph 
of Article 230 EC) of the Treaty only if the 
decision at issue affects them by reason of 
certain attributes peculiar to them or by 
reason of circumstances in which they are 
differentiated from all other persons, and 
by virtue of these factors distinguishes them 
individually just as in the case of the person 
addressed. 
By itself, their status as negotiators with 
regard to social aspects of a decision 
declaring aid incompatible with the com­
mon market does not suffice to distinguish 
bodies representing the employees of the 
undertaking in receipt of aid individually 
just as in the case of the person to whom 
the decision at issue was addressed, where 
it is apparent from the account of the facts 
in the decision at issue that that status 
constitutes only a tenuous link with that 
decision and that the applicant bodies did 
not participate in the procedure initiated 
under Article 93(2) of the Treaty (now 
Article 88(2) EC). 
The fact that in one point of the grounds 
for the decision at issue the Commission 
mentioned considerations of a social nature 
is irrelevant, given that that institution did 
not base its assessment of the compatibility 
of the aid with the common market on that 
observation but that it is clear on the 
contrary from that decision, taken as a 
whole, that it is based on other grounds. 
(see paras 39, 47-49 , 51 , 53-54) 
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