Notice for the OJ

 

Action brought on 9 November 2004 by Bouygues SA and Bouygues Télécom against Commission of the European Communities

    (Case T-450/04)

    (Language of the case: French)

An action against the Commission of the European Communities was brought before the Court of First Instance of the European Communities on 9 November 2004 by Bouygues SA and Bouygues Télécom, established in Paris and in Boulogne Billancourt (France) respectively, represented by L. Vogel, J. Vogel, F. Sureau, D. Théophile, B. Amory and A. Verheyden, lawyers.

The applicant claims that the Court should:

-    annul Article 1 of Decision C(2004)3060 of the Commission of the European Communities of 2 August 2004;

-    annul Article 2 of that decision;

-    order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The present action is directed against Decision C(2004)3060 of 2 August 2004, whereby the European Commission considered that the shareholder's advance granted by France to the Groupe France Télécom in December 2002, in the form of a credit line of EUR 9,000 million, placed in the context of the statements made since 2002, constituted State aid incompatible with the common market. The Commission also decided that that aid should not be recovered.

As regards the finding that the measure in question constituted aid, the applicants further criticise the decision in issue for having refused to classify as State aid the commitments resulting from the statements of the French Government, which had publicly supported France Télécom's credit between July and October 2002, although that undertaking, which was heavily in debt, was making enormous losses.

In support of their claims, the applicants allege that:

-    by refusing to classify as State aid the statements of the French Government of July, September and October 2002, taken either individually or collectively, the Commission misapplied Article 87 of the Treaty. The defendant should have found in that regard that the statements had conferred on France Télécom an advantage which distorted both competition and trade between Member States;

-    the contested decision is based on contradictory and inadequate reasons. The applicants maintain on that point that, after finding that the French Government's statements combined all the characteristics of State aid, it did not draw the logical conclusion and classify the statements as aid;

-    as concerns the refusal to order recovery of the aid, there is a breach of Article 14(1) of Regulation No 659/1999 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 88 of the Treaty and also a breach of essential procedural requirements in that the reasons are inadequate. The applicants maintain that the Commission was perfectly capable of quantifying the amount of the aid without infringing France's rights of defence and that recovery of the aid in question would not in this case have constituted a breach of the principle of protection of legitimate expectations.

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