Europe punishes Saremar

Genoa - In June it was the Italian Court of Auditors that reprimanded the Region of Sardinia for the public assistance funds provided to Saremar. The European Commission’s ruling on the case was handed down yesterday, and it requires Saremar to return the 10.8 million Euros to the region, as they are considered illegal state aid. The commission maintained that some of the funds that Sardinia provided to the company in 2011 and 2012 were incompatible with the strict European regulations on state aid to private companies. In fact, the Commission explained that “the supplying of capital under non-market terms, and the compensation paid to the company for navigation services gave Saremar an unfair economic advantage over its competitors”. This is the justification for the requirement that the 10.8 million Euros be repaid.

On two other issues brought up in the complaint, however, the Commission found in favour of the Region of Sardinia. These are two small victories, and so not enough to soften the blow of the ruling. Joaquin Almunia, the vice-President of the European Commission and its Commissioner for Competition, explained that “member states and regional authorities are obviously free to finance services of general economic interest. However, as set forth in the E.U. regulations, financing should be transparent and based on clearly defined public service obligations”. Sardinia’s president, Ugo Capellacci, responded indirectly, “Europe”, he wrote yesterday on Twitter, “is in the hands of bureaucrats and the private lobbies: but we won’t surrender, we’ll continue to fight for a European Union that serves its own citizens”. Then Cappellacci announced that he was filing complaints at the Court of Justice and the European Court, raising suspicions about the Commission’s actions. The region had been expecting coordination with the E.U. in the complaint against Tirrenia on January 21st, but instead it received a reprimand.

But Cappellacci has also been criticized by the opposition, which is questioning his populist decision to provide services when he wasn’t able to guarantee them economically, as the Court of Auditors showed last June (”The financial commitment by the region was about 15 million Euros, so an average cost of about 34 Euros per passenger carried by Saremar (in 2012)”, but “despite this financing, the company recorded losses of over 3.6 million Euros in its last two statements. And the company’s liabilities should not be paid for out of the public purse”). Brussels is now saying that Cappellacci couldn’t legally guarantee the services, either. It would have been better, say Mauro Pili, from the Sardinian Popular Coalition, and Romina Mura, of the Democratic Party (Pd), “to start from the agreement that the State established with CIN Tirrenia, which led to the failures that we know about and the fine which the Antitrust Authority handed down to CIN and MOBY for forming a cartel”.

In 2012, Saremar received 6.1 million Euros of capital from Sardinia. The European Commission concluded that no private investor in an analogous situation operating under market conditions would have made such an investment. Furthermore, the Commission stated that compensation of 10 million Euros paid to Saremar for services provided in 2011 and 2012 (on two routes linking Sardinia and continental Italy) were not in conformity with E.U. regulations for services of general economic interest (SGEI).