No L' 386/18 Official Journal of the European Communities 31. 12. %94 COMMISSION DECISION of 21 December 1994 concerning aid to be granted by Germany to the steel company EKO Stahl GmbH, Eisenhiittenstadt (Only the German text is authentic) {Text with EEA relevance) (94/1075/ECSC) THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Tx;eaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, and in particular the first and second paragraphs of Article 95 thereof, After consulting the Consultative Committee and with the unanimous assent of the Council, Whereas: I In April 1994, the Commission authorized aid of up to DM 813 million pursuant to Article 95 of the ECSC Treaty, notified by Germany in November 1993, to support the restructuring and privatization of EKO Stahl AG under a plan designed in cooperation with the Italian Riva group. In May 1994 the Riva group withdrew from ~ the privatization contract. I In October 1994, Germany notified the Commission of a new plan to restructure and partly privatize EKO Stahl GmbH. The company, situated in the Land of Brandenburg, in the territory of the former German Democratic Republic, had been founded after the Second World War as a ‘Kombinat’ under the socialist economic system then prevailing in that territory, After German unification in 1990 it became a public company (Aktiengesellschaft). The corporate form of EKO Stahl Aktiengesellschaft was changed into Gesellschaft mit beschrinkter Haftung (GmbH, private limited company) in June 1994. The only shareholder is the Treuhandanstalt (hereinafter referred to as ‘the THA’), a public entity acting as a holding company for the former State-held companies. of the former German Democratic Republic. The notification of the aid linked to the restructuring plan, submitted on 10 October 1994 and revised on 13, 19 and 20 October 1994, provides for the purchase of 60 % of the shares by the Belgian steel company Cockerill Sambre SA, through a holding created for this purpose, by 1 January 1995. The purchaser may buy the remaining 40 % of the shares at any time and will be under contractual obligation to take over the remaining shares after 31 December 1999 on demand from the THA. The purchase price will be established by an independent expert on the basis of the earning capacnty value but will not exceed DM 40 million. The decision to sell the majority of shares to Cockerill Sambre SA was taken after a general and unconditional bidding procedure which was closed in September 1994. After an in-depth examination of the six bids received, the THA concluded that Cockerill Sambre SA had made the best offer. Germany submitted the comparison of the offers prepared by the THA and some additional information concerning the evaluation of the different proposals. The restructuring concept envisages the installation of ‘a new blast furnace with a capacity of 1,5 million tly, the modernization of the sintering and cold-rolling facilities and the power station without changing their current capacities, some repairs in the sintering and crude steel facilities and the installation of a new hot-wide-strip mill with a capacity of 1,5 million t/y to close the existing technological gap in the production flow which has been covered so far by expensive hiring of hot-rolling capacity elsewhere. The capacity of this mill will be limited to 900 kt/y during a period of five years after the last closure or the last payment of aid to investment under the restructuring plan. Some of the existing blast furnaces will be dismantled after the new furnace becomes fully operational. The pig iron capacity will thereby be limited to 1,9 million tfy. The proposed investments, totalling DM 1 300 million, amount to DM 282 million for the new blast furnace, DM 27 milion for the sintering facilities, DM 671 million for the hot-wide-strip mill, DM 308 million for the cold-rolling mill and DM 12 million for the power station. The investment of DM 1 100 million will have to be carried out after 1 January 1995. DM 200 million had already been spent by the end of 1994 for the modernization of the cold-rolling facilities. The THA will cover DM 275 million of the investments and the expenses of DM 39 million for repairs. It will