The EU General Court holds that when the Commission orders recovery of aid that is intended to be passed on to final consumers, it must first calculate the amount, if any, that has been retained by the direct recipients of the aid (Aer Lingus) (Ryanair)

A New but Dubious Concept of Advantage [1]* When the Commission orders recovery of aid that is intended to be passed on to final consumers, it must first calculate the amount, if any, that has been retained by the direct recipients of the aid. If the calculation is too complex, the Commission can delegate that task to national authorities. Introduction On 5 February 2015, the General Court ruled in two related cases: T-473/12, Aer Lingus v Commission[2] and T-500/12, Ryanair v Commission[3]. Because the two cases are very similar, this article examines only the first judgment. In both cases, the applicants sought the annulment of Commission Decision 2013/199. In that decision the Commission found that a lower tax on air travel that applied to flights that were essentially domestic