72The Commission states that, according to the case-law, Article 88(2) EC does not require individual notice to be served but only that all persons who may be concerned be made aware that a procedure has been initiated and given an opportunity to submit their comments in this regard. That being so, the publication of a notice in the Official Journal is an adequate and sufficient means of informing all the parties concerned that a formal procedure has been initiated (Case 323/82 Intermills v Commission [1984] ECR 3809, paragraph 17, and Joined Cases T-129/95, T-2/96 and T-97/96 Neue Maxhütte Stahlwerke and Lech-Stahlwerke v Commission [1999] ECR II-17, paragraph 232). In the present case, the decision to open the procedure, published in the Official Journal on 5 February 2000, meets those requirements because that publication provided the parties concerned with general information on the essential aspects of the aid project and set out the points of the case about which the Commission had doubts.
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