By judgment of 17 January 2024, the Danish Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Danish Rail Regulatory Body in a case concerning charges for service facilities.
On 18 September 2019, the Danish Rail Regulatory Body made a decision against the operator of two service facilities (freight terminals), including an injunction to lower a number of the operator's charges for 2019.
The operator filed a lawsuit with the district court, where the Danish Rail Regulatory Body was acquitted by judgment of 11 May 2021.
The judgment was then appealed to the Court of Appeal, which, by judgment of 26 April 2022, overturned the district court's judgment and ruled in favor of the operator.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal was appealed to the Danish Supreme Court, which in the judgment of 17 January 2024 upheld the judgment of the district court.
During the trial, the operator submitted a claim for invalidity of the Danish Rail Regulatory Body’s decision, as a number of allegations were made about lack of legal basis, lack of reasoning, etc.
The district court and the Danish Supreme Court did not rule in favor of the operator in any of the allegations.
The Danish Supreme Court stated, among other things:
- There was legal basis for the Danish Rail Regulatory Body to lower the charges with reference to the fact that the charges were set higher than the costs plus a reasonable profit. It was not an additional condition that the Danish Rail Regulatory Body carried out a supplementary analysis of competitive conditions, etc., as stated by ECJ in case C-144/20 (AS LatRailNet) premise 35.
- The charges could be assessed individually for each individual type of service, and that such an individual assessment did neither contravene with the Danish Railway Act nor the Directive 2012/34.
Read the entire verdict on the Danish Supreme Court's website here (pdf)