Doux Élevage SNC and Coopérative agricole UKL-ARREE v Ministère de l’Agriculture, de l’Alimentation, de la Pêche, de la Ruralité et de l’Aménagement du territoire and Comité interprofessionnel de la dinde française (CIDEF).
Date: 2013-05-30
25. Article 107(1) TFEU makes that incompatibility subject to the confirmation that four conditions have been met. First, there must be an intervention by the State or through State resources. Second, the intervention must be liable to affect trade between Member States. Third, it must confer an advantage on the recipient. Fourth, it must distort or threaten to distort competition ( Pearle and Others , paragraph 33 and the case-law cited).
26. With regard to the first of those conditions, the settled case-law of the Court shows that only advantages granted directly or indirectly through State resources are to be considered aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU. The distinction made in that provision between aid granted by a Member State and aid granted through State resources does not signify that all advantages granted by a State, whether financed through State resources or not, constitute aid but is intended merely to bring within that definition both advantages which are granted directly by the State and those granted by a public or private body designated or established by the State (Case C‑379/98 PreussenElektra  [2001] ECR I‑2099, paragraph 58 and the case-law cited). Thus, the prohibition in Article 107(1) TFEU may also cover, in principle, aid granted by public or private bodies established or appointed by the State to administer aid (see, to that effect, Pearle and Others , paragraph 34 and the case-law cited).
27. However, for advantages to be capable of being categorised as aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU, they must, first, be granted directly or indirectly through State resources and, second, be imputable to the State ( Pearle and Others , paragraph 35 and the case-law cited).
29. In that regard, the Court has already stated in paragraphs 59 and 61 of PreussenElektra that Member State legislation which, by establishing an obligation to purchase certain goods at minimum prices, confers advantages upon certain undertakings and imposes disadvantages on others, does not involve any direct or indirect transfer of State resources to undertakings which produce those goods and that an obligation of that kind is not capable of conferring the character of State aid upon that legislation.
30. In paragraph 36 of Pearle and Others , the Court, examining the charges imposed by a trade association on its members in order to finance an advertising campaign, reached the same conclusion, finding, inter alia, that, since the costs incurred by the public body for the purposes of that campaign were offset in full by the levies imposed on the undertakings benefiting therefrom, its action did not tend to create an advantage which would constitute an additional burden for the State or that body.
34. Nonetheless, it is also clear from the case-law of the Court that it is not necessary to establish in every case that there has been a transfer of State resources for the advantage granted to one or more undertakings to be capable of being regarded as a State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU (see Case C‑482/99 France v Commission  [2002] ECR I‑4397, paragraph 36 and the case-law cited).
35. Thus, the Court has ruled that Article 107(1) TFEU covers all the financial means by which the public authorities may actually support undertakings, irrespective of whether or not those means are permanent assets of the public sector. Therefore, even if the sums corresponding to the measure in question are not permanently held by the Treasury, the fact that they constantly remain under public control, and therefore available to the competent national authorities, is sufficient for them to be categorised as State resources (see France v Commission , paragraph 37 and the case-law cited).
36. In the case in the main proceedings, the conditions laid down by the Court in paragraph 37 of the judgment in France v Commission are not met. It is clear that the national authorities cannot actually use the resources resulting from the contributions at issue in the main proceedings to support certain undertakings. It is the inter-trade organisation that decides how to use those resources, which are entirely dedicated to pursuing objectives determined by that organisation. Likewise, those resources are not constantly under public control and are not available to State authorities.
38. It is clear from the case-file submitted to the Court that the legislation at issue in the main proceedings does not confer upon the competent authority the power to direct or influence the administration of the funds. Moreover, as the Advocate General noted in point 71 of his Opinion, according to the case-law of the competent national courts, the provisions of the Rural Code governing the extension of an agreement introducing the levying of contributions within an inter-trade organisation do not permit public authorities to exercise control over CVOs except to check their validity and lawfulness.