Case C-459/24 P: Appeal brought on 27 June 2024 by Ideella föreningen Svenska Bankföreningen med firma Svenska Bankföreningen, Näringsverksamhet against the judgment of the General Court (Fourth Chamber, Extended Composition) delivered on 17 April 2024 in Case T-112/22, Svenska Bankföreningen et Länsförsäkringar Bank v Commission
Date: 2024-06-27
Institutions: Court of Justice
Subjects: State aid, Sweden, control of State aid, credit institution, financial risk, tax








C_202404851EN.000101.fmx.xml












Official Journal of the European Union


EN
C series













C/2024/4851


12.8.2024






Appeal brought on 27 June 2024 by Ideella föreningen Svenska Bankföreningen med firma Svenska Bankföreningen, Näringsverksamhet against the judgment of the General Court (Fourth Chamber, Extended Composition) delivered on 17 April 2024 in Case T-112/22, Svenska Bankföreningen et Länsförsäkringar Bank v Commission


(Case C-459/24 P)

(C/2024/4851)
Language of the case: English

Parties


Appellant: Ideella föreningen Svenska Bankföreningen med firma Svenska Bankföreningen, Näringsverksamhet (represented by: P. Hansson, M. Eriksson, M. Persson, advokater)

Other parties to the proceedings: Länsförsäkringar Bank AB, European Commission, Kingdom of Sweden

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:






—


set aside the judgment of the General Court;










—


give final judgment in the present proceedings or if necessary refer the case back to the General Court for a ruling on the pleas that have not yet been examined; and










—


order the Commission to pay the costs of the proceedings at both instances.





Pleas in law and main arguments

First ground of appeal – error of law in the application of Article 107(1) TFEU when determining the objective
The General Court infringed Article 107(1) TFEU when it assessed and determined the objective of the risk tax as being to tax ‘credit institutions that pose a systemic risk’ since it does not conform with the objective presented by Sweden in the legislative process, which was instead to tax large credit institutions.
Second ground of appeal – error of law in application of Article 107 TFEU and Article 108 TFEU in finding no serious difficulties
In its second ground of appeal the appellant claims that the General Court infringed Article 107(1), Article 108(2) and (3) TFEU, and Article 4(2) and (4) of Regulation 2015/1589 (1) when it concluded that the Commission did not experience serious difficulties when assessing (i) the objective, (ii) each of the constituting elements of the reference system and (iii) the existence of any derogation to the reference system. First as regards the objective, the General Court erred in law when it concluded despite the vague and opaque wording of the objective that the Commission had not encountered serious difficulties in its assessment of that objective.
Second, even if the Court considers that the objective was correctly determined by the General Court and there were no serious difficulties in this respect, the General Court erred in law when examining the constituting elements of the reference system: (i) The tax base since liabilities do not measure ‘systemic risk’, which was evident in the information available to the Commission, (ii) the persons liable to pay the tax, since the information available to the Commission when adopting its decision showed the incoherence between the persons liable to the risk tax and the objective of the tax and (ii) the threshold since the information available to the Commission when adopting its decision showed that the choice of the threshold was not well adjusted to capture systemically important institutions.
Third, with reference to what had been stated previously, the General Court erred in law, when it assessed and found that the Commission should not have had doubts as to whether credit institutions above and below the threshold were in a comparable factual and legal situation.
Third ground of appeal – infringement of the obligation to state reasons
The General Court infringed its obligation to state reasons when it claimed that the applicants at first instance had not demonstrated that the failure of those credit institutions not subject to the tax would pose a systemic risk, while the applicants at first instance indeed had put forward such argument, which had not been assessed by the General Court. Moreover, the General Court had misconstrued the argument put forward by the applicants at first instance, and finally, since the General Court had determined the wrong objective, the General Court failed to correctly assess several arguments put forward by the applicants.
Fourth ground of appeal – distortion of facts and evidence
Finally, the General Court has distorted facts and evidence when it determined the objective of the tax as the determined objective did not follow from the draft bill.


(1)  Council Regulation (EU) 2015/1589 of 13 July 2015 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (OJ 2015, L 248, p. 9).


ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/C/2024/4851/oj
ISSN 1977-091X (electronic edition)