24.12.2005 Official Journal of the European Union L 342/81 COMMISSION DECISION of 1 December 2004 on the State aid which France is planning to implement for Bull (notified under document number C(2004) 4514) (Only the French text is authentic) (Text with EEA relevance) (2005/941/EC) THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, and in particular the first subparagraph of Article 88(2) thereof, Having regard to the Agreement on the European Economic Area, and in particular Article 62(1)(a) thereof, Having called on interested parties to submit their comments pursuant to the provisions cited above (!) and having regard to those comments, Whereas: I. PROCEDURE On 13 November 2002, the procedure laid down in Article 88(2) of the Treaty opened in respect of a EUR 450 million cash advance granted by France to Bull was closed by the Commission by Decision 2003/599/EC () — a positive decision conditional on the aid being repaid by 17 June 2003. On 26 November 2003, the Commission brought an action before the Court of Justice of the European Communities for France’s failure to comply with the decision (3). At the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004, a number of meetings took place in the course of which the French authorities and Bull explained the content of Bull's restructuring plan, and in particular its third stage, that of recapitalisation. France notified the aid proposal to which the present Decision relates by letter dated 20 February 2004. By letter dated 16 March 2004, the Commission informed France of its decision to open the procedure laid down in Article 88(2) of the Treaty in respect of the said proposal. () O] C 102, 28.4.2004, p. 12. () OJ L 209, 19.8.2003, p. 1. (}) Case registered under the number C-504/03. G) The Commission Decision to open the procedure was published in the Official Journal of the European Union (. The Commission called on interested parties to submit their comments on the aid in question. The Commission received comments from represen- tatives of Bull's employees. A meeting between a dele- gation of those representatives and the Commission took place on 8 June 2004, following which the represen- tatives provided the Commission with additional infor- mation. The Commission forwarded the information to France for its comments, and at the same time asked a number of questions about several aspects of the case. It received France’s comments and replies by letters dated 28 May and 29 July 2004. A meeting between the Commission, the French authorities and Bull took place on 10 September 2004. II. DESCRIPTION 1. The aid recipient Bull is an international information technology (IT) group based in Europe doing business in over 100 countries (°). It is active mainly in two areas: — high-end professional computer servers: Bull designs and markets a range of large servers for professional use and provides maintenance services directly linked to those servers. Bull's market share in the Community as constituted on 30 April 2004 (here- inafter called the Community of Fifteen) came to approximately 3 % (approximately 5% in the case of medium and high-end servers). Its main compe- titors in this field are IBM (34,3 % market share), Hewlett Packard (HP), which took over Compaq in 2001 (29,4 %), Sun (12,6 %) and Fujitsu/Siemens (8,9 %), — specialised IT engineering services: Bull develops and integrates different applications, builds software archi- tectures, etc. Following the sale of its Integris division to Steria, Bull's activities in this market sector have been centred particularly on France and Italy. Bull’s main competitors here are IBM and HP. Bull's market share in the Community of Fifteen comes to less than 1%. (*) See footnote 1. () http://www.bull.com