EC stuurt Oostenrijk naar Europees Hof van Justitie (en)
IP/09/1134
Brussels, 14 th July 2009
State aid: Bank Burgenland - Commission refers Austria to Court for failure to recover illegal state aid
The European Commission has decided to refer Austria to the European Court of Justice under EC Treaty state aid rules for failure to comply with a Commission decision of 30 April 2008 (see IP/08/667 and MEMO/08/282 ). The Commission had requested Austria to recover an estimated €41.5 million of illegal aid (plus interest) from the Austrian insurance group Grazer Wechselseitige (GRAWE), in the context of the privatisation of Bank Burgenland. To date, Austria has not yet recovered the aid from GRAWE.
Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes i said "The Commission deal s very strictly with Member States that fail to implement its state aid decisions. This is crucial to avoid unfair distortions of competition."
In March 2006, following a public tender, Land Burgenland sold the state-owned Bank Burgenland to GRAWE for €100.3 million. However, a Ukrainian/Austrian consortium had made a higher bid at €155 million.
In the absence of an objective justification for accepting a significantly lower price for the sale of Bank Burgenland, the Commission considered that the price difference between the two offers gave an unfair advantage to GRAWE over its competitors and constituted incompatible state aid that needed to be recovered. The recovery of the aid was to be based on the nominal price difference between the two bids, amounting to €54.7 million. As the final bids differed in a number of points, Austria had to determine the exact aid amount by adjusting this nominal value difference accordingly. Following lengthy exchanges between the Commission and the Austrian authorities, and based on calculations made by Austria, the recovery amount was fixed at €41.5 million, plus interest.
Austria should have taken all the necessary measures to implement the decision within four months from the adoption of the decision. However, more than one year after the adoption of the decision, Austria has failed to adopt any measure to recover the aid from GRAWE. Moreover, although the recovery amount of €41.5 million had been based on calculations made by Austria, the Austrian authorities recently called into question this amount.
The approach adopted in this case is fully in line with the Commission's State Aid Action Plan presented in June 2005 (see IP/05/680 and MEMO/05/195 ) and with the Commission's Notice on the implementation of decisions ordering Member States to recover unlawful and incompatible state aid (see IP/07/1609 ).