Failure of a Member State : The Court of Justice of the European Union orders a Member State to pay a lump-sum penalty as it did not recover an unlawful and incompatible aid (Commission / Spain)

*This article is an automatic translation of the original article, provided here for your convenience. Read the original article. By six decisions of 11 July 2001, the Commission declared tax aid schemes adopted by three provinces of the Spanish Basque Country (Álava, Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa) incompatible with the common market and ordered Spain to recover the aid unlawfully paid under these non-notified schemes. The entities granting the aid each brought actions for annulment of those decisions before the Court of First Instance. The Commission brought the matter before the Court of Justice under Article 88(2) EC and the Court of Justice, by judgment of 14 December 2006 (C-485/03), found that Spain had failed to fulfil its obligations under the six decisions of 11 July 2001 on the