Staatssteun: Commissie verwijst Polen naar Hof van Justitie vanwege niet terugvorderen onwettige hulp aan Buczek Technologie (en)

The European Commission has decided under EC Treaty state aid rules to refer Poland to the European Court of Justice for failure to comply with a Commission decision of 23 October 2007 (see IP/07/1590). The decision ordered Poland to recover illegal and incompatible state aid from Technologie Buczek and two of its subsidiaries, Huta Buczek and Buczek Automotive. To date, Poland has not achieved a full recovery of the illegal aid.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes i commented: "The Commission will continue to take a strong stance against Member States that do not recover state aid from companies who received unfair and illegal support."

On 23 October 2007, the Commission found that the Polish tube producer Technologie Buczek had received illegal and incompatible aid in the form of a public debt waiver and had misused restructuring aid it received in 2003. Two subsidiaries of Technologie Buczek, Huta Buczek Sp. z o.o. and Buczek Automotive Sp. z o.o., benefited from this illegal aid through significant capital and asset injections from Technologie Buczek before its bankruptcy. Therefore, the Commission ordered Poland to recover the unlawful aid not only from TB, but also from its subsidiaries.

Poland should have taken all the necessary measures to implement the decision within four months from the adoption of the decision.

Over a year after the deadline, Poland has not fully recovered the illegal and incompatible aid. According to the Commission decision, the main burden of the recovery should remain with the subsidiaries. However, to date, nothing was recovered from them and Poland failed to inform the Commission of measures that would give full effect to the decision. The Commission therefore concluded that the implementation of the Commission's recovery decision by Poland was not satisfactory and decided to refer Poland to Court of Justice.

This approach is in line with the State Aid Action Plan presented in June 2005, which is designed to ensure an effective and timely state aid control (see IP/05/680 and MEMO/05/195).