From the point of view of EU law, the private enforcement of State aid law, i.e. litigation initiated by private parties before a national court with the aim of preventing the payment of State aid, achieving its recovery or claiming damages, appears to be fairly straightforward. Both the substantive and procedural bases of such claims are relatively clearly set out in the case law of the CJEU and in EC soft law. However, when attempting to translate these EU law guidelines into an actual action under national law, a number of procedural as well as substantive problems arise. There is no unified legal framework and various overlapping areas of national law need to be analysed, in particular public law, general tort law, unfair competition law, State liability law, civil procedure and administrative procedure. This may be one of the reasons why such actions are virtually unknown in Slovakia. The article draws on inspiration mainly from German and Austrian case law and analyses how such claims could be framed under Slovak law. It concludes with the question of whether greater harmonisation could facilitate the development of private enforcement of EU State aid law.
Keywords: Private Enforcement; Slovak Republic; Unlawful Aid; Compatible Aid.