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the contested decision defines the sole beneficiaries of the unlawful aid as the companies which produced shale and products consisting mainly of shale between 1 April 2002 and the date of the decision (‘shale producers’); and

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the contested decision specifies the amount of aid to be recovered from the shale producers alone, requires recovery from them of the full amount of the aggregates levy (‘AGL’) to which the unlawful exemptions applied and fails to require the UK Government to reduce the amount to be recovered to the extent that the shale producers passed on the benefit of those exemptions to their customers; and

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The Applicant puts forward that the case-law of the General Court in Case T-308/00 RENV, Salzgitter/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2013:30), that has established that recovery must be limited to the financial advantages actually arising from the placing of the aid at the disposal of the beneficiary, and be proportionate to them. Moreover, so the Applicant states, Cases T-473/12, Aer Lingus/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:78) and T-500/12, Ryanair/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:73), establish that, in the case of an aid consisting of a reduction of an indirect tax levied on the consumption of a particular good or service and intended to be passed on by an undertaking to its customers, and where the economic advantage arising from the application of the reduced tax could also have been passed on to its customers, the amount of aid falling to be recovered from the undertaking is only the advantage actually obtained and retained by the undertaking.

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The Applicant further puts forward that the AGL is an indirect tax levied on the consumption of aggregates and intended (by the UK Government) to be passed on by the undertakings extracting and commercially exploiting the aggregates, to their customers. The economic advantage arising from the shale exemptions, so the Applicant claims, could have been –and indeed actually was- passed on by the shale producers (including the Applicant) in the form of lower prices for the sale.

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The Applicant further puts forward that for the same reason, recovery of the full amount of unpaid aggregates levy could not ensure the re-establishment of the status quo ante and would be liable to create additional distortions of competition, since it could lead to the recovery of more from the shale producers (including the Applicant) that the advantage they actually enjoyed.

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Accordingly, so the Applicant states, following Cases T-473/12, Aer Lingus/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:78) and T-500/12, Ryanair/Commission (ECLI:EU:T:2015:73), the only aid falling to be recovered from the shale producers is the advantage actually obtained and retained by them.

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Finally, the Applicant puts forward that insofar as the contested decision requires the recovery from the shale producers of the full amount of the AGL from which they were exempted under the shale exemptions, without any reduction to take account of the benefit passed on by the shale producers to their customers, the Commission made an error of law, wrongly applied Article 108 TFUE and/or Article 14 of Council Regulation (EC) 659/1999 laying down detailed rules for the application of Article 93 of the EC Treaty (OJ L 83, p. 1) and/or made a manifest error of assessment.