48Moreover, a Member State whose authorities have granted aid contrary to the procedural rules laid down in Article 93 may not rely on the legitimate expectations of the recipient undertaking in order to justify a failure to comply with the obligation to take the steps necessary to implement a Commission decision instructing it to recover the aid. If it could do so, Articles 92 and 93 of the Treaty would be set at naught, since national authorities would thus be able to rely on their own unlawful conduct in order to deprive of their effectiveness decisions taken by the Commission under provisions of the Treaty (Case C-5/89 Commission ν Germany [1990] ECR I-3437, paragraph 17).
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