Case T-300/02

Azienda Mediterranea Gas e Acqua SpA (AMGA)

v

Commission of the European Communities

(State aid – Scheme of aid granted by the Italian authorities to certain public utilities in the form of tax exemptions and loans at preferential rates – Decision declaring the aid incompatible with the common market – Actions for annulment – Not individually concerned – Inadmissibility)

Summary of the Judgment

Actions for annulment – Natural or legal persons – Measures of direct and individual concern to them – Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme – Action brought by an undertaking which did not receive individual aid granted under the scheme

(Art. 230, fourth para., EC)

Natural or legal persons other than the addressee may claim that a decision is of individual concern to them only if that decision affects them by reason of certain attributes which are peculiar to them, or by reason of factual circumstances which differentiate them from all other persons and thereby distinguish them individually in the same way as the person addressed.

An undertaking cannot, as a general rule, bring an action for the annulment of a Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme if it is concerned by that decision solely by virtue of the fact that it belongs to the sector in question and is a potential beneficiary of the scheme. Such a decision is, vis-à-vis such an undertaking, a measure of general application covering situations which are determined objectively and entails legal effects for a class of persons envisaged in a general and abstract manner.

However, an undertaking which is concerned by the decision at issue not only as an undertaking in the sector in question and a potential beneficiary of the aid scheme concerned but also as an actual recipient of individual aid granted under that scheme, recovery of which had been ordered by the Commission, is individually concerned by the decision and the action which it brings against it is admissible.

An undertaking which made only losses and did not therefore benefit from a three-year income tax exemption is not individually concerned by a Commission decision prohibiting a sectoral aid scheme consisting in such an exemption. An action brought by such an undertaking against such a decision is inadmissible.

(see paras 46-48, 50)