Services of General Economic Interests in Competition Law : From Procureur de la République/Adbhu Until la Poste - The Raise and Fall of the State Aid Approach and its Consequences

Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) have been subject to long debate. The Altmark-ruling in 2003 aimed at providing clarity with respect to how SGEI should be treated in state aid. Since 2008, however, evidence was missing how these criteria are applied in practice by the CFI. As the CFI had relied on the state aid approach contrary to the ECJ's compensation approach, tensions between the application of the Altmark-criteria through the CFI were to be expected. In BUPA and La Poste, the CFI now applied and interpreted the Altmark-criteria. Surprisingly, it applied the Altmark-criteria not in a coherent way. While BUPA provided for a Member-State-friendly interpretation, La Poste applies the Altmark criteria even retrospectively and hence very restrictively. However, this only supports as a first conclusion that the State Aid Approach was buried by the CFI in legal history. Second, the Altmark-criteria in practice are not interpreted as smoothly as people might have desired