In its Judgment of 19 December 2013 in case C-262/12 Vent De Colère and Others, the Court of Justice of the EU has largely followed AG Jääskinen's Opinion (commented here) and confirmed that, under Article 107(1) TFEU, a mechanism for offsetting in full the additional costs imposed on undertakings because of an obligation to purchase wind-generated electricity at a price higher than the market price that is financed by all final consumers of electricity in the national territory constitutes an intervention through State resources and, consequently, is under the general prohibition of State aid.
This Judgment must be welcomed, particularly because the CJEU follows the submission made by the AG, who considered that consumer contributions amounted to the existence of 'State resources', due to 'the fact that these resources constantly remain under public control and, therefore, are available to the competent national authorities, [which] suffices to qualify them as State funds to finance the measure, which then falls within the scope of Article 107(1) TFEU' (para 34 of his Opinion, own translation from Spanish).
Indeed, the CJEU has reviewed the characteristics of the body administering the funds paid by consumers (a public body under effective State supervision) and has stressed that
33 […] the sums thus managed by the Caisse des dépôts et consignations must be regarded as remaining under public control.
34 All those factors taken together serve to distinguish the present case from that which gave rise to the judgment in PreussenElektra, in which the Court held that an obligation imposed on private electricity supply undertakings to purchase electricity produced from renewable sources at fixed minimum prices could not be regarded as an intervention through State resources where it does not lead to any direct or indirect transfer of State resources to the undertakings producing that type of electricity (see, to that effect, PreussenElektra, paragraph 59).
35 As the Court has already had occasion to point out – in paragraph 74 of the judgment in Essent Netwerk Noord and Others – in the case which gave rise to the judgment in PreussenElektra, the private undertakings had not been appointed by the Member State concerned to manage a State resource, but were bound by an obligation to purchase by means of their own financial resources.
36 Consequently, the funds at issue [in PreussenElektra] could not be considered a State resource since they were not at any time under public control and there was no mechanism, such as the one at issue in the main proceedings in the present case, established and regulated by the Member State, for offsetting the additional costs arising from that obligation to purchase and through which the State offered those private operators the certain prospect that the additional costs would be covered in full.
37 Accordingly, Article 107(1) TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that a mechanism for offsetting in full the additional costs imposed on undertakings because of an obligation to purchase wind-generated electricity at a price higher than the market price that is financed by all final consumers of electricity in the national territory, such as that resulting from Law No 2000-108, constitutes an intervention through State resources (C-262/12 at paras 33 to 37, emphasis added).
In my view, the Vent De Colère Judgment advances in the functional approach to State aid and consolidates a general criterion of State control that should reduce the uncertainty surrounding the imputability to the State of (indirect) support measures through consumer contributions. The distinction with PreussenElektra is also rather clear now. The only hurdle that remains in the way of such truly functional approach is the issue of imputability as addressed in Doux Élevages particularly in relation with (pseudo)fiscal measures (something that AG Jääskinen had addressed in paras 50-54 of his Opinion but the CJEU felt no need to discuss in Vent De Colère). Hopefully, the CJEU will also minimise Vent De Colère on that point some time soon.