Standstill obligation: The Court of Justice of the European Union confirms the validity of a decision of the European Commission, which qualified a guarantee scheme protecting the shares of individual members of recognised financial cooperatives as a State aid (Vervloet)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. In the context of the financial crisis of 2008, the Belgian authorities set up a guarantee system for the benefit of natural persons who held shares in three cooperative financial companies of the ARCO Group, which was at the time one of the main shareholders of Dexia. This scheme was notified by the Belgian authorities to the Commission on 7 November 2011. In 2014, the Commission considered that it constituted state aid incompatible with the internal market. The Commission's decision was the subject of two actions for annulment before the Court of First Instance, which are still pending. At the same time, certain investors who did not benefit from a