Public establishment: The General Court of the European Union confirms that the European Commission rightly applied the case law presumption principle to public industrial and commercial establishment under French law dealings with banks and financial institutions and recognises that the mere fact that it benefits from a State guarantee was enough for the European Commission to rely on that presumption (France / Commission)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. This judgment is the latest in a series of judgments handed down by the European courts concerning the specific features of the French legal status of public industrial and commercial establishments ["EPIC"]. EPICs are public establishments which, in France, are not subject to insolvency proceedings under the general principle of unseizability of public property. In this case, the Court of First Instance analysed the validity of a Commission decision establishing that a change, in July 2006, of the status of the Institut Français du Pétrole Énergies Nouvelles ["IFPEN"] from a private-law legal person under the economic and financial control of the French