64Indeed, first, as far as concerns State aid, according to settled case-law, on the one hand, the preliminary stage of the procedure for examining aid under Article 108(3) TFEU, merely intended to allow the Commission to form a prima facie opinion on the partial or complete conformity of the aid in question, on the one hand, must be distinguished from the actual investigation stage referred to by Article 108(2), on the other hand. It is only in connection with the latter phase, which is designed to allow the Commission to be fully informed of all the facts of the case, that the FEU Treaty imposes an obligation, for the Commission, to give interested parties notice to submit their comments (judgments in Cook v Commission, cited in paragraph 24 above, EU:C:1993:197; paragraph 22; Commission v Sytraval and Brink’s France, cited in paragraph 23 above, EU:C:1998:154, paragraph 38; and of 13 December 2005 in Commission v Aktionsgemeinschaft Recht und Eigentum, C‑78/03 P, ECR, EU:C:2005:761, paragraph 34). It follows that interested parties, other than the Member State concerned, including competitors of the aid recipient, such as the applicant in the present case, have no right to be associated with the procedure in the preliminary examination stage.
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