Meaning of the EU Concept of SGEI Emerging from the CJEU Case Law

Abstract

Based on the results of Chaps. 3and 4, this chapter proposes a legal understanding of the EU concept of SGEI, trying to identify what the meaning of “economic” is in SGEI and what the core elements of the concept in EU law can be in the present Treaty frame. An essential submission in that chapter is that the notion of “entrustment to an undertaking”, repeatedly included as a central element in the Commission’s tentative definitions of the notion of SGEI, is not part of the core elements of the EU concept of SGEI, whereas the notion of obligation/task is. Another important argument is that the “E” in SGEI refers to the fact that the public service regulation is of economic interest, in the sense that it can affect the economic conditions for the exercise of an activity which can be economic at an EU level, i.e. is economic in some Member State(s), but not necessarily in the Member State imposing that regulation.