CELEX: C2007/069/53
Language: en
Date: 2007-03-24 00:00:00
Title: Case T-25/07: Action brought on 30 January 2007 — Iride and Iride Energia v Commission

24.3.2007   
            
            
               EN
            
            
               Official Journal of the European Union
            
            
               C 69/24
            
         Action brought on 30 January 2007 — Iride and Iride Energia v Commission
   (Case T-25/07)
   (2007/C 69/53)
   Language of the case: Italian
   Parties
   
      Applicants: Iride and Iride Energia (Turin, Italy) (represented by: L.G. Radicati di Brozolo, M. Merola and C. Bazoli, avvocati)
   
      Defendant: Commission of the European Communities
   Forms of order sought
   The applicants claim that the Court should:
   
               —
            
            
               declare that the Decision is void in so far as it classes the measures as State aid, and in so far as it suspends payment of the aid until such time as Italy has provided evidence that AEM Torino has refunded the aid declared to be unlawful and incompatible with Decision 2003/193/EC of 5 June 2002 concerning tax relief for former municipal administrative bodies;
            
         
               —
            
            
               order the Commission to pay the costs.
            
         Pleas in law and main arguments
   The application lodged by Iride SpA and Iride Energia SpA (‘the applicants’) concerns the Decision of 8 November 2006 by which the Commission closed the proceeding initiated pursuant to Article 88(2) EC to investigate the compatibility with Community law of a refund that Italy intends to grant to AEM Torino for stranded costs in the energy sector (1).
   The applicants claim that the Court of First Instance of the European Communities should declare that the Decision is void in so far as it classes as State aid the measures taken to reimburse AEM Torino in respect of the stranded costs incurred during the liberalisation of the energy sector, and in so far as it suspends payment of the aid until such time as Italy has provided the Commission with evidence that AEM Torino has not received the aid declared to be unlawful and incompatible with Decision 2003/193/EC concerning tax relief for former municipalizzate [municipal administrative bodies] (‘the Tax Relief Decision’), or with evidence that AEM Torino has reimbursed, with interest, any such aid that it may have received.
   The application is based inter alia on the following main pleas:
   
               (a)
            
            
               The measure in question does not constitute State aid in that it was not financed through the use of State resources and does not accord the recipients gratuitous advantage.
            
         
               (b)
            
            
               The judgment in Deggendorf
                   (2) is not applicable in the present case. The Commission has failed, in particular, to show that the conditions that must be met — according to the principles that may be extracted from Deggendorf — in order for payment of the aid to be suspended, have in fact been met. (In particular, the Commission has not shown the potential cumulative effect of the new measures and the earlier measures.) In particular, the Commission has not explained how it is possible that cumulative effects can arise as a result of the aid which is the subject of the Tax Relief Decision, and measures like the stranded costs, which are designed merely to bring about equalisation, and thus the effects of which are exhausted in the past, enabling the costs incurred during the period when the market was regulated to be amortised in a manner similar to the manner in which the undertakings would have proceeded if the sector had not been liberalised before those costs had been fully amortised.
            
         
      (1)  OJ L 366, 21.12.2006, p. 62.
   
      (2)  Case C-355/95 TwD v Commission [1997] ECR I-2549.