On 9 August 2008, the new General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) that had already been adopted on 7 July was finally published in the Lseries of the Official Journal. It then entered into force on 29 August 2008. Having started with three block exemption regulations on aid to SMEs, training aid and de-minimis in early 2001 and having continued to cover other areas by the same sort of instrument, this is the first wholesome consolidation of areas as