A successful court challenge of an EU Commission State aid
approval decision addressed to the UK has caused the suspension of
the UK electricity market's capacity mechanism. In this
article, we examine what outcome this could mean for (i) the
similar pending court challenge of the EU Commission State aid
approval of Ireland's capacity mechanism, and (ii) clients
adversely affected by any State aid measure approved by the EU
Commission who are considering their legal options.
In November 2018, the General Court of the European Union found
that the EU Commission had breached procedural fairness rules in
approving the UK electricity market's capacity mechanism under
State aid law rules because it had failed to consider fully a
complaint it had received and in particular it had failed to
initiate a 'formal investigation' on foot of it. This
successful challenge was taken by the complainant, an energy
provider who had expressed concerns to the EU Commission
