96The appellants add that the mandatory nature of the prohibition on State aid laid down in Article 4(c) of the Treaty, on which the Court of First Instance principally based itself, is negated by the adoption, since 1980, of the six steel aid codes which established derogations from the principle of the prohibition on such aid. The ability of Member States to grant aid under certain conditions henceforth brings this matter under Article 67 of the ECSC Treaty, which applies only where the actions to which it refers are liable to have appreciable repercussions on conditions of competition. Accordingly, since the action of the Commission under Article 67 of the abovementioned Treaty is intended to restore competition, the Court of First Instance should have ascertained whether the aid in question had any repercussion whatever on intra-Community trade and whether its recovery could have an effect on competition, taking into account the lapse of time since it was granted. Moreover, the Court of First Instance has acknowledged that Article 4(c) of the Treaty is not absolute in nature. The appellants refer in that regard to Case T-239/94 EISA v Commission [1997] ECR II-1839, paragraph 62.
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