It should be provided in this Regulation that for the purposes of an application for the recognition and enforcement of a decision relating to maintenance obligations the term ‘creditor’ includes public bodies which are entitled to act in place of a person to whom maintenance is owed or to claim reimbursement of benefits provided to the creditor in place of maintenance.

The Slovak authorities confirmed that, under the arrangement in respect of both its public and its private creditors, Konas had fulfilled its obligations within the time limit laid down in the creditors’ agreement.

Further, the convertible bonds purchased by private bodies as part of the May 2001 restructuring programme cannot serve as a benchmark because, although the evidence on record did not rise to the level sufficient for a finding of entrustment or direction, it indicates a level of government involvement that makes the participation by private creditors an inappropriate measure of the commercial reasonableness of the CB purchases: the creditor banks themselves acknowledged in the 7 May 2001 creditor financial institution resolution that Hynix was unable to service its debts in May 2001 (59) and the GOK was clearly heavily involved in overse ...[+++]eing the completion of the May 2001 CB offering, going as far as having a high level FSS official attend the March 2001 meeting of the creditor council (60).

The Paris Club group of creditor nations have committed themselves to work towards a solution in the course of 2004 but comparable treatment will be needed from non-Paris club official creditors and private lenders.

(45) The terms were also favourable in comparison with the only private preferential creditor, namely Banesto Leasing SA. However, the Commission considers that the positions of Banesto Leasing and the public preferential creditors cannot be compared and the argument cannot suffice to prove the absence of aid in the agreements between Refractarios and the public creditors.

Consequently, the Commission considers that such a comparative approach does not constitute in this particular case a correct application of the "private creditor" test as defined by the Court, which as it subsequently underlined in its judgment of 29 June 1999 in the DMT case (C-256/97)(10), supposes that the public creditors' behaviour under examination should be compared with that of a hypothetical private creditor finding himself, as far as possible, in the same situation.