This Week in Luxembourg

This week’s Grand Chamber judgement (well, the one that’s not about the CAP) upholds the General Court’s state aid judgement in EDF v. Commission. The Commission erred by not applying the private investor test to judge the offending tax waiver in the context of the French state’s overall relationship with EDF. Commission v. EDF (per Judge Arabadjiev) Cf. European Law Blog

Much as in economic terms there are only a few air passenger transport companies, legally every airline is still a separate company, and is entitled to be treated as such, for example when it comes to counting years of experience “with the company” for employee remuneration purposes. Counting in this way does not constitute unlawful age discrimination. Tyrolean Airways v. Betriebsrat Bord der Tyrolean Airways (per Judge Arabadjiev)

In Vinkov v. Nachalnik Administrativno-nakazatelna deynost (per Judge Toader), the prejudicial question was declared inadmissible on the grounds that it constituted a wholly internal situation. That’s a pity, because all sorts of fun could have potentially been had with the question of whether the right to an effective remedy (art. 47 Charter) requires access to court for any and all traffic tickets.

Professionally speaking, my case of the week is Westbahn v. ÖBB-Infrastruktur. Westbahn is a new entrant on the Austrian long-distance railway market (Vienna-Salzburg, to be precise), and they now have the support of AG Jääskinen for the claim that ÖBB should treat their trains and ÖBB’s own trains the same when it comes to passenger information in case of delay. It looks like the AG went with the objectives of the Regulation. Cf. Recent Developments in European Consumer Law Blog

There are quite a few interesting things going on in AG Trstenjak’s opinion in the asset freeze case of Al-Aqsa. On the one hand, Al-Aqsa is trying to get the CJEU to overrule the grounds upon which the General Court rested its holding, but not the holding itself. (After all, Al-Aqsa won.) The AG argues that you can’t appeal dicta. On the other hand, the Netherlands is still trying to salvage its SNAFU of having repealed the national decision upon which the EU decision rested immediately after said EU decision was taken, “because it was now redundant”. But no luck, Al-Aqsa’s assets remain unfrozen.

AG Bot argues that once again a Member State (Germany, in this case) should lose in a Turkish workers case. 3^rd country nationals (a Thai, in this case) who have been married to Turkish workers for a significant amount of time are a “member of the family” of said worker, and therefore enjoy the same free movement rights. This is still true after they divorce. Dülger v. Wetteraukreis

The General Court rejected ICI’s action for annulment against its € 91 million cartel fine. (Cf. Commission Decision) As far as I can see, there is nothing but nuts & bolts competition law here. ICI v. Commission (per Judge Labucka)