Skip navigation
Newswire

EU court upholds bar on VW aid in eastern Germany

LUXEMBOURG, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The European Union's top court upheld on Tuesday a ban on the German government paying auto giant Volkswagen millions of Deutschmarks to build car plants in east Germany in the 1990s.

The European Court of Justice said that it confirmed the ruling of the lower Court of First Instance.

The European Commission's competition watchdog blocked 240 million Deutschmarks of state subsidy in 1996. The EU's Court of First Instance supported the decision in 1999, saying that Europe was building too many cars already.

The lower court added that Germany did not have a blanket right to give money to east Germany, where communist-era Trabant cars could not compete with western vehicles.