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EU: Court overturns subsidy repayment order to Deutsche Post

By  |  July 14, 2016

The European Union’s second-highest court on Thursday overturned a 2012 decision by the European Commission ordering Germany to recover hundreds of millions of euros from Deutsche Post AG in subsidies it paid for postal workers’ pensions.

The court overturned a 2012 decision by the European Commission—the EU’s executive arm—that the public financing of pensions at Deutsche Post was in breach of EU law since it constituted state aid.

The court’s ruling means that Deutsche Post will be able to secure the €377 million set aside for the matter, which is currently kept on an escrow account, a Deutsche Post spokesman said.

The European Commission had initially estimated the amount to be between €500 million and €1 billion, but the German government had in 2012 calculated that the amount in question was €298 million, plus interest added, according to the Deutsche Post spokesman.

Full Content: The Wall Street Journal

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