Chillin'Competition

Champagne tastes great. A resounding victory against the European Commission probably tastes better. Yay! As the academic one in the duo (read: as someone who does not know how it feels to win a tough case after years of hard work), however, I cannot help spoiling the party with a geeky and anti-climactic counterpoint to Alfonso’s last post.

Last year, I published a statistical analysis of State aid litigation before EU courts. I was curious about the factors influencing the outcome of challenges against Commission decisions. I had of course some intuitions, but I was genuinely surprised with the results. It is interesting to compare some of the findings with the cases on selectivity that Alfonso discussed in his post.

• The single most remarkable finding is that the chances of success of an annulment action against a Commission decision increase dramatically when the Member State becomes involved in the proceedings (either as an applicant or in support of the recipient’s application). Close to one in two (44%) decisions were annulled with Member State involvement. Without the support of the central government, recipient firms did less well: only in in four decisions were annulled (26%).
• Many factors may account for this substantial divergence in outcome (I discuss some of them in the article). What matters for this post is that both Autogrill and Santander challenged the Commission decision without the support of the State, yet they won. One may interpret this outcome as meaning that their case was very strong on substance, or that they hired excellent lawyers. Or both, as they are not mutually incompatible. The latter is true here. Clearly. No doubt.
• What if the Commission decides to appeal the rulings before the ECJ? Interesting one. My study shows that the Court does not set aside GC rulings very often, except when the case revolves around selectivity… which is precisely the issue at stake in Autogrill and Sandander. If one examines the case law of the past few years, it seems clear that the ECJ tends to favour a broader notion of selectivity and the GC a narrower one (think of NOx, Gibraltar or British Aggregates).
• Against this background, the interdisciplinary scholar in me would say that the Commission would have a fair chance of winning the case on appeal. The black letter lawyer that I still am, on the other hand, would say that these cases will prove the limits of statistical studies. It is indeed difficult to believe that the ECJ will uphold the analysis of the Commission. Rendez-vous in a couple of years!