EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS

EU ANTITRUST: HOT TOPICS & NEXT STEPS 2022

Prague, Czechia

4. Conclusion The issue of the standard of judicial review is gravely important for any prospective applicants in the field of state aid. As regards complex economic assessments, the standard of review so far has been incorporating features going beyond mere manifest errors of assessment (e.g., Case C-290/07 P Scott , paras. 65 and 66) to check, among other things, whether the facts have been accurately stated, and the standard having been complied with. While it appears that there has been an attempt in Comune di Milano to cut away from the “general” competition law heritage, this standard of review going beyond the issue of a manifest error in assessment is still present in State aid (C-847/19 P Achemos Grupė , Case C-933/19 P Autostrada Wielkopolska S.A ), having been successfully received from cases such as Tetra Laval , KME Germany , Chalkor and others, as in my view it well should be. Thus, even where there would be complex assessments from the Commission in its decisions in the area of state aid, the Court (and the GC, for that matter) ought not to try to deny that those assessments are beyond review developed originally in other areas of competition law, but rather give the applicants their due – namely, effective judicial protection going beyond manifest error of assessment. Acknowledgements This paper constitutes one of the effects for project no 2015/17/N/HS5/02575 (Sytuacja prawna przedsiębiorstwa w prawie Unii Europejskiej dotyczącym pomocy państwa [Legal position of an undertaking in the law of the European Union on state aid]), funded by the National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki – NCN, Poland) with the author as the principal investigator. References [1] Bacon K. (ed) (2017). European Union Law of State Aid . Oxford: Oxford University Press. [2] Council Regulation (EU) 2015/1589 of 13 July 2015 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Un ion, OJ L 248, 24 September 2015, pp. 9–29. [3] Hofmann H., Micheau C. (eds) (2016), State Aid Law of the European Union . Oxford: Oxford University Press. [4] Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) of 15 February 2005, Commission of the European Communities v Tetra Laval BV (Case C-12/03 P), EU:C:2005:87, para. 39. [5] Judgment of the Court (Second Chamber) of 10 January 2006, Ministero dell’Econo mia e delle Finanze v Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze SpA, Fondazione Cassa di Rispar-

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