Abstract:

This paper offers a concise overview of the most significant developments that occurred in the last year in the field of State Aid control. The first part of the paper is devoted to the developments in the Commission practice in the context of the State Aid Modernization, and in particular to the main legislative (or soft law) innovations, namely the “Notice on the notion of State aid” and the amendment of the General Block Exemption Regulation. The second part, instead, focuses on the evolution of the case law on three topics selected for their relevance: the selectivity criterion, with special attention to tax selectivity, a topic which is strictly intertwined with the Commission’s policy objective of fighting at once tax evasion and harmful unilateral tax measures adopted by member States; the recovery of unlawful aid, with the emphasis placed on the difference between direct and indirect aids when calculating the amount to be recovered; and the role of national judges in the assessment of aid measures and the inherent predictable development of private enforcement in the field of State Aid. The paper ends with a forward-looking perspective on developments expected in the next future.

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