Case T‑601/11

Dansk Automat Brancheforening

v

European Commission

‛Actions for annulment — State aid — Online gaming — Introduction in Denmark of lower taxes for online gaming than for casinos and amusement arcades — Decision declaring aid compatible with the internal market — Aid to facilitate the development of certain activities — Lack of individual concern — Regulatory act entailing implementing measures — Inadmissibility’

Summary — Judgment of the General Court (Fifth Chamber), 26 September 2014

Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Regulatory acts entailing implementing measures — Commission decision fining an aid compatible with the internal market — Inadmissibility of the action brought before the EU judicature — Right to effective judicial protection — Obligation to use internal remedies to challenge those measures

Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Commission decision finding an aid compatible with the internal market — Action by an association acting in the collective interests of its members — Whether members of the association individually affected — Need for the association to demonstrate that its members substantially affected — None — Inadmissibility

Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Decision on State aid — Action by an association entrusted with defending the collective interests of undertakings — Admissibility — Conditions

Actions for annulment — Natural or legal persons — Measures of direct and individual concern to them — Commission decision terminating an aid proceeding — Competitor of the undertaking receiving the aid — Right to bring an action — Conditions

See the text of the decision. (see paras 31-33, 41, 42)

See the text of the decision. (see para. 37)

In the case of an action by an association acting in the collective interest of its members against a Commission decision declaring an aid compatible with the common market, it is not for the EU courts, when considering whether the application is admissible, to make a definitive finding on the competitive relationship between the applicant’s members and the undertakings in receipt of the aid in question. It is for the applicant alone to adduce pertinent reasons to show that the aid in question may adversely affect the legitimate interests of one or more of its members by substantially affecting their position on the market in question. Where an applicant has not demonstrated that the consequences of the aid measure in question affects not only its members in their objective capacity as operators of offline games in the same way as any other economic operator in the same situation, nor demonstrated the extent of the potential impact of the aid measure in question on the economic situation of its members, it has not established that the aid measure in question was liable to have a substantial adverse effect on the position of one or more of its members on the market concerned. The members of the association and, consequently, the association itself, are therefore not individually concerned by the contested decision. (see paras 40, 52)

See the text of the decision. (see paras 54-57)