the EU commission intimate to SNCM to give back to the French State 440 million euros



A new and heaviest tile have fallen on the head of the company of Maritime French navigation Société Nationale Corse-Méditerranée (SNCM), than already it pours in a precarious financial situation. According to two sentences of the Law court of the European Union with respect to resources introduced from the company of French navigation Corsica Ferries in order to obtain the cancellation of the decisions of the EU commission of authorization of the aids granted from the French State to the SNCM, resources that are received by the EU Court, the EU commission in fact has now established that the aids publics granted to the SNCM for its restructure and privatization were incompatible with the communitarian norms in matter of aids of State and that therefore the company has received regarding its competitors an undue economic advantage pairs to about 220 million euros, figure that will have to reimburse.

The EU commission has decided also of boldness the Law court of the EU for the lacked recovery by the French State subsidies, than last May the Commission it has established to be illegal, that they were granted to the SNCM for the effettuazione of "complementary" services of public character defined for the marine connection between Marseilles and the Corsica during the tourist season, services that - Brussels has explained - however already are supplied by the private sector. Also such aid, for which Brussels it had asked the restitution within four months, has a total value of 220 million euros.

The EU commission has remembered that, second the communitarian norms, the enterprises in difficulty as the SNCM can receive aids of Been about to the restructure if they are satisfied determined conditions: they must sussistere perspective realistic that over the long term is guaranteed the economic sustainability of the companies aid object and that such companies sufficiently contribute to the costs of the restructure to the aim to reduce the burdens at the expense of the contributors and in order to limit the distortions of the competition caused by aids of State through compensating measures. If of the SNCM, the EU commission it has concluded that the restructure plan that accompanies the aid does not allow with the company to restore the profit in the long term without uses it of new aids of State; moreover, the specific contribution of SNCM to the restructure costs has been much limiting; at last, the proposed compensating measures have been widely insufficient in order to place remedy to the determined distortions of the competition from the aid.

From part its French government has contested the last decisions of the EU commission stating as the first tranche of the aid measures opportunely was validated by the same Commission, while for the relative subsidies to the complementary services of public character the French executive has remembered to have introduced appeal after a its resource is rejected last August by the Law court EU.