European Union – Freedom of establishment. Article 49 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union should be interpreted as precluding tender specifications governing the conditions to which a reprivatisation process of an air carrier company was subject from including a requirement that the purchaser of those shares had to ensure that the existing national hub was maintained and developed. The Court of Justice of the European Union so held in a preliminary ruling in proceedings concerning the validity of a decision setting out certain conditions in the tender specifications for the process of indirectly reprivatising Transportes Aéreos Portugueses SA.