- Volume 16 (2017), Issue 3
- Vol. 16 (2017), No. 3
- >
- Pages 482 - 486
- pp. 482 - 486
France/SNCM v European Commision ∙ Cases T-366/13 and T-454/13 ∙ Annotation by Adrien Giraud
On 1 March 2017, the General Court confirmed a decision by which the European Commission ordered France to recover €220 million from SNCM. In practice, the judgment has little consequences because of SNCM’s bankruptcy. From a legal standpoint however, the judgment is significant because it refuses to endorse the Commission’s thesis according to which Member States must in all cases evidence a market failure in order to correctly define a SGEI. In other words, the Commission attempted to increase the scope of the control it performs on the definition of SGEIs and the GC – as it has sometimes in the past – refused to condone this approach.
Keywords: Altmark; SGEI; Market Failure; Public Service.