Skip to content

Recovery of Unlawful Aid in Case of Insolvency

Stefania Bello, Germano Guglielmi

DOI https://doi.org/10.21552/estal/2020/4/6

Keywords: Recovery Notice, unlawful aid, State aid recovery, insolvent beneficiaries


The provisions on State aid laid down by the TFEU aim at preventing that public intervention in the economy could affect trade and distort competition to an extent contrary to the common interest. To this end, the Commission may order Member States to recover State aid granted in breach of EU law. This article focuses in particular on the specific case of aid recovery from insolvent beneficiaries. The Commission has always taken a very rigorous approach on this matter, requiring the winding-up of the beneficiary and the exit from the market where it is not able to reimburse the total amount of the recovery, regardless of the circumstances of the case. The Recovery Notice adopted in 2019 confirmed the rigid position taken by the Commission towards insolvent beneficiaries. The main purposes of this article are, firstly, to assess the approach adopted by the Commission and, secondly, to investigate the existence of the possibility for the Member State to behave as a private creditor in recovering the unlawful aid, or to suspend the recovery procedure in order to examine a plan to relaunch the activities of the insolvent beneficiary.
Keywords: Recovery Notice; unlawful aid; State aid recovery; insolvent beneficiaries

Stefania Bello, Advisor in Legislative Affairs, Public Funding and State Aid Department, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA. Germano Guglielmi, Head of Legislative Affairs, Public Funding and State Aid Department, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane SpA. For correspondence: <mailto:s.bello@fsitaliane.it> and <mailto:g.guglielmi@fsitaliane.it>.

Share


Lx-Number Search

A
|
(e.g. A | 000123 | 01)

Export Citation