EU Competition Law, Volume IV: State Aid

This book explains the EU Commission's overall approach to compatibility of State Aid, describes the new common principles for assessment and discusses the new requirements for evaluation and transparency.

---

This second edition constitutes a state-of-the-art description and analysis of all aspects of the state aid discipline. Above all, it sets out all the novelties of the State Aid Modernisation programme which was launched in 2012, and completed in summer 2014.



The new edition reviews all major guidelines, frameworks, and legislation: including the Procedural Regulation, the Enabling Regulation, the General block exemption Regulation and the de minimis Regulation. The book explains the Commission's overall approach to compatibility of state aid, describes the new common principles for assessment, and discusses the new requirements for evaluation and transparency. It gives a detailed account of; the new rules on research; development and innovation; energy and environment, including the ETS; risk capital and risk finance; regional development; and rescue & restructuring of firms in difficulty. The book also explains the first rules ever adopted by the Commission on important projects of common European interest. It discusses the relationship between state aid and the structural funds, in particular the new use of those funds via financial instruments. All the main economic sectors affected by the modernisation programme are discussed, including broadband, cinema, public service broadcasting, aviation, agriculture, fisheries, and maritime & land transport. A special section is dedicated to services of general economic interest, introducing the new SGEI package and explaining how it has been applied. The section on banking provides a full account of how the rules and enforcement practice have evolved since the start of the financial crisis, and discusses the issues which arise with the introduction of the new regulatory framework for a European Banking Union. The notion of aid section takes account of the most recent jurisprudence of the Union Courts and the Commission's decisional practice, thereby addressing issues frequently faced by practitioners and public authorities.



Above all, the new edition builds on the hands-on expertise of the many authors who have been dealing with state aid cases in the recent past.