Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2009:192
Date: 2009-06-11
Language of the case: Italian
Court formation: Eighth Chamber, Extended Composition
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: State aids;Competition
Concepts: Applications by natural or legal persons
Procedure: Action for annulment - inadmissible
Origin: Italy

Summary of the Judgment Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them –Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme – Action brought by an undertaking which did not receive individual aid granted under the scheme (Art. 230, fourth para., EC) Natural or legal persons other than the addressees may claim that a decision is of individual concern to them only if that decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them, or by reason of factual circumstances which differentiate them from all other persons and thereby distinguish them individually in the same way as the person addressed. An undertaking cannot, as a general rule, bring an action for the annulment of a Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme if it is concerned by that decision solely by virtue of the fact that it belongs to the sector in question and is a potential beneficiary of the scheme. Such a decision is, vis-à-vis such an undertaking, a measure of general application covering situations which are determined objectively and entails legal effects for a class of persons envisaged in a general and abstract manner. However, an undertaking which is concerned by the decision at issue not only as an undertaking in the sector in question and a potential beneficiary of the aid scheme concerned but also as an actual recipient of individual aid granted under that scheme, recovery of which had been ordered by the Commission, is individually concerned by the decision and the action which it brings against it is admissible. An undertaking which declared a loss for tax purposes for the relevant period and whose assessment to tax was thus effectively nil and which fails to adduce any convincing evidence to establish that it nevertheless benefited from the scheme in question is not individually concerned by a Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme consisting in a three-year income tax exemption. An action brought by such an undertaking for the annulment of such a decision is inadmissible. Moreover, the fact that it is possible for the Commission to determine more or less precisely the number, or even the identity, of the persons to whom a measure applies by no means implies that the measure must be regarded as being of individual concern to those persons. (see paras 46-48, 51, 54-55)