Summary

(State aid - Aid awarded by the Hungarian authorities to certain electricity generators - Power purchase agreements concluded between a public undertaking and certain electricity generators - Decision declaring the State aid incompatible with the common market and ordering its recovery - Concept of State aid - Advantage - New aid - Operating aid - Legitimate expectations - Legal certainty)

APPLICATION for, in essence, the annulment of Commission Decision 2009/609/EC of 4 June 2008 on the State aid C 41/05 awarded by Hungary through Power Purchase Agreements (OJ 2009 L 225, p. 53) and, in the alternative, the annulment of Articles 2 and 5 of that decision.

Background to the dispute

Information concerning the applicant

1. The applicant, Dunamenti Erömü Zrt., is an electricity generator on the Hungarian electricity market which operates a power plant located approximately 30 km south of Budapest (Hungary). It is a former public undertaking which was privatised during the mid-1990s. It is approximately 75% owned by Electrabel SA, which itself forms part of the group headed by GDF Suez SA. The applicant is also approximately 25% owned by Magyar Villamos Müvek Zrt. ('MVM'), a public undertaking whose activities comprise power generation as well as wholesale, transmission and retail activities on the Hungarian electricity market.

2. On 10 October 1995, just before its privatisation, the applicant entered into a power purchase agreement with MVM in respect of the 'F blocks' and 'G2 block' of its power plant ('the PPA at issue' or 'the PPA in question'). That agreement, which entered into force in 1996, was to continue until 2010, so far as concerns the gas-fired 'F blocks', and until 2015, so far as concerns the 'G2 block', a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) unit.

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