28.9.2020

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 320/32

(Case T-513/20)

(2020/C 320/64)

Language of the case: Spanish

Parties

Applicant: Asociación Profesional de Empresas de Reparto y Manipulado de Correspondencia (Asempre) (Madrid, Spain) (represented by: J. Piqueras Ruiz, I. Igartua Arregui and M. Troncoso Ferrer, lawyers)

Defendant: European Commission

Form of order sought

The applicant claims that the General Court should:

—annul European Commission Decision C (2020) 3108 final of 14 May 2020, concerning State aid SA.50872 (2020/NN) — Compensation to Correos under the universal service obligation, 2011-2020; and, consequently,

—order the Commission to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The present action is brought against European Commission Decision C(2020) 3108 final, of 14 May 2020, concerning State Aid SA.50872 (2020/NN) — Compensation to Correos under the universal service obligation, 2011-2020, by which the Commission decided, inter alia, that the public service compensation paid to Correos during the period 2011-2020 was unlawful State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU, which is, however, compatible with the internal market, in accordance with Article 106(2) TFEU.

In support of the action, the applicant relies on three pleas in law.

1.First plea in law, alleging a manifest error of assessment.

—The applicant submits that the Commission erred in finding that part of the compensation paid by the State during the period analysed should be attributed to the period before 2011, and specifically to the period from 2007 to 2010. Although the Commission seeks to argue that the budget reference line corresponds to the supply of a universal public service by Correos in the years 2008, 2009 or 2010, and that accordingly it must be considered to be aid attributable to those periods, which should have been set out in the budget code preceded by the years ‘2007’, ‘2008’, ‘2009’ or ‘2010’, respectively, that was not, however, what occurred. On the contrary, the budget reference lines were identified as 2011 1701 491N 441 and 2013 1703 491N 442. That means that those budget reference lines were attributed to a service carried out and assessed during that annual period, and not during another annual period.

2.Second plea in law, alleging a manifest error of assessment and infringement of Article 22 of Directive 97/67/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 December 1997 on common rules for the development of the internal market of Community postal services and the improvement of quality of service (OJ 1997 L 15, p. 14).

—In that regard, the applicant submits that the cost of administrative notifications during the period concerned could not be the subject of State compensation, since that State compensation is unlawful and incompatible aid that the Commission had not, however, taken into account in the contested decision. The Commission takes completely the opposite position to that adopted by the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y de la Competencia (National Markets and Competition Commission) by including the cost of administrative notifications in the universal service obligations and in thus considering that that cost may be lawfully compensated by state contributions. As it is, the Commission infringed its duty to observe procedural safeguards which should guide the application of Article 107 TFEU by disregarding the position adopted by the Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y de la Competencia (National Markets and Competition Commission) in its capacity as the regulatory authority for the postal sector.

3.Third plea in law, alleging a manifest error of assessment and infringement of Article 107 TFEU.

—In that regard, the applicant states that the Commission should not have excluded from the aid calculation in the present case the amounts exempted from the tax on real estate and business tax.