720 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM According to the Court, point 22 of the Guidelines sets out three cumulative requirements for aid granted to a company belonging to a group to be considered compatible with the internal market, which the Commission must examine: 1) the aid beneficiary is part of a group and its composition; 2) the difficulties encountered by the beneficiary are specific to it and are not the result of an arbitrary allocation of costs within the group; and 3) these difficulties are too serious to be dealt with by the group itself. Nonetheless, according to the court, the decision does not show that TAP’s difficulties were specific to it neither the result of an arbitrary allocation of costs within the group allegedly constituted by the airline and its shareholders. Nor does it set out the financial situation of the companies that are shareholders in TAP or their possible ability to resolve, other than in part, its difficulties. It follows that the General Court was not in a position to examine the truthfulness of those statements and was unable to verify whether the conditions laid down in point 22 of the Guidelines were satisfied. Accepting this plea meant that the other pleas raised by Ryanair need not be examined, and the Commission’s decision was annulled for failure to state reasons. However, the effects of the annulled decision were maintained based on the overriding considerations of legal certainty provided for in article 264(2) TFEU, by which the EU judge may, ex offcio, limit the effect of the annulment in his judgement. In other words, the company was not deprived of the financial resources allocated by the Portuguese State. The ruling of the General Court of the European Union (Tenth Chamber, Extended Composition) thus suspended the effects of the annulment of the contested decision until the adoption of a new decision by the Commission under article 108 TFEU. The General Court’s censure of the Commission, considered by some experts to be an affront to the competition authority, had a similar effect on the 3.4 billion euros in aid granted by the Netherlands to KLM. Here too, the General Court annulled the decision for lack of reasoning but suspended the effects of the decision. The Commission should have taken into account the fact that KLM belongs to the same group as Air France and has thus received aid from the French Government. In the General Court’s view, where there is reason to fear the effects on competition arising from the accumulation of State aid within a single group, it falls to the Commission to
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