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Action brought on 7 April 2010 - Samskip Multimodal Container Logistics v Commission

(Case T-166/10)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Applicant: Samskip Multimodal Container Logistics BV ('s-Gravenzande, Netherlands) (represented by: K. Platteau, Y. Maasdam and P. Broers, lawyers)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

annul Commission Decision C(2010) 580 of 27 January 2010 on the financial assistance for proposals for actions submitted in the 2009 selection procedure in the European Union programme granting the Community financial assistance to improve the environmental performance of the freight transport system (Marco Polo II)¹, in so far as it selects Proposal No TREN/B4/SUB/01-2009 MP-II/6, the G2G@2XL project, for funding amounting to EUR 2 190 539;

order the Commission to pay the costs of the procedure pursuant to Article 87(2) of the Rules of Procedure.

Pleas in law and main arguments

In support of its application, the applicant puts forward two pleas in law on the following grounds.

In its first plea, the applicant claims that the contested funding infringes the funding conditions and requirements provided by Article 5(2) of Regulation 1692/2006 as

it causes an unacceptable distortion of competition contrary to the common interest within the market of freight forwarding services by the alternative modes of transport proposed by the G2G@2XL project, namely rail and short sea shipping from Italy, Switzerland and Austria to the United Kingdom; and

the G2G@2XL project will not stay viable after the prescribed period of 36 months.

In its second plea the applicant claims that the contested funding infringes Article 1 of Regulation 1692/2006 as it does not contribute to the common interest goals that are pursued by the Marco Polo II Programme. The contested funding will merely result in a shift from an existing multimodal operator to another multimodal operator and not from road transport to rail transport. As a result, no extra road freight traffic will be shifted to environmentally friendly modes. Hence, the contested funding will not contribute to an actual reduction in international road freight transport and will therefore not reduce congestion nor contribute to the pursued improvement of the environmental performance of the transport system (i.e. the common interest goals that are pursued by the Marco Polo II Programme and which are provided in Article 1 of Regulation 1692/2006).

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¹ - Regulation (EC) No 1692/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 2006 establishing the second Marco Polo programme for the granting of Community financial assistance to improve the environmental performance of the freight transport system (Marco Polo II) and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1382/2003, OJ 2006 L 328, p. 1