France Telecom has won a case at the General Court of the EU against a 2004 decision by the Europan Commission that had found it guilty of benefiting from unlawful state aid when the French government said publicly two years earlier that it would provide a EUR 9 billion credit line at a time when the operator was near bankruptcy. The court found that statements made from July 2002 onwards "granted an advantage to FT in that it played a role in enhancing the confidence of the financial markets and in improving the conditions of the company's refinancing. However, the EC failed to prove that the announcement in itself entailed a transfer of State resources". The rulling annuls the 2004 EC decision and can still be appealed one last time to the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court. Last year, France Telecom was unable to overturn another 2004 decision by the EC that required it to pay back up to EUR 1.1 billion in back taxes to the French government.
