Following difficulties encountered in its activities, however, SMI was forced to file for bankruptcy, which resulted in its name being changed to ‘SMI iG’, as a company in liquidation, and in the appointment of an administrator, who, in order to ensure continuation of SMI’s activities and to save the jobs of 105 employees, established a hive-off vehicle, the company ‘SiMI’, the services relating to consultancy, marketing, development and design of microelectronic products and services having already been transferred to SiMI’s wholly-owned subsidiary ‘MD & D’. The Land of Brandenburg and the body which succeeded the Treuhandanstalt granted their financial support to the hive-off vehicle before SiMI and MD & D found a buyer and MD & D ultimately purchased the share capital of SiMI. As it took the view in the contested decision that the grants and loans thus made to SMI and the hive-off company respectively were incompatible with the common market, the Commission ordered the Federal Republic of Germany to take all necessary measures to recover the disputed aid from its beneficiaries, that is to say, according to the Commission, the companies SMI, SiMI and MD & D, as well as any other firm to which their assets had been or might be transferred in order to evade the consequences of the Commission’s decision. Although the German Government argued that the grants made to SMI by the Treuhandanstalt, in the same way as those from the body which succeeded it, were covered by the derogating framework governing the activities of the Treuhandanstalt with a view to restructuring the undertakings of the former German Democratic Republic and ensuring their transition from a planned economy to a market economy, inasmuch as they had been made in the context of what it regarded as the privatisation of SMI, the Court took the view that ‘the term “privatisation” must be construed narrowly in the context of the Treuhandanstalt aid schemes’ (paragraph 24) and that, although ‘it cannot therefore be ruled out that the acquisition of a minority interest in a public undertaking, combined with a transfer of the effective control of that undertaking, may be regarded as a “privatisation” for the purposes of the Treuhandanstalt aid schemes’ (paragraph 25), that was not the position in the present case as the Treuhandanstalt had in many respects retained control over SMI after Synergy had acquired its shares.
Potem ko je Sodišče ugotovilo, da se, čeprav je HBA javno podjetje, v konkretnem primeru ni izkazalo, da bi bila oglaševalska kampanja financiranassredstvi,kibijihdalinavoljonacionalni organi, in da nasprotno iz predložitvene sodbe izhaja, da so sredstva, ki jih je HBA uporabil za financiranjereklamnekampanje,prispevalinjegovičlani, v korist katerih je bila ta oglaševalska kampanja organizirana, v obliki obveznih namenskih dajatev za organizacijo te oglaševalske kampanje, in da je povrhu pobudo zanjo dalo zasebno združenje optikov, je Sodišče razsodilo, da „je treba člena [87] (1) [ES] in [88] (3) [ES] razlagati tako, da pravila, ki jih sprejme poklicno združenje javnega prava za svoje člane in o katerih odločajo slednji, tako da sredstva, ki jih prispevajo navedeni člani in ki so obvezno namenjena financiranjuzadevnekampanje,nisosestavnidelukrepapomoči v smislu navedenih določb in ni treba, da bi bila Komisija o njih predhodno obveščena, če se ugotovi, da je bilo navedeno financiranjeizvedenossredstvi,skateriminavedenopoklicno združenje javnega prava v nobenem trenutku ni moglo prosto razpolagati“ (točka 41). Tako na zadnji vprašanji ni bilo treba odgovoriti.