Maria Segura, Marianne Clayton, Aidan O’Connell

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 18 (2019), Issue 3, Page 424 - 427

Maria Segura, Egill Olafsson, Marianne Clayton

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 17 (2018), Issue 4, Page 556 - 560

Marianne Clayton, Egill Olafsson, Maria Segura

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 17 (2018), Issue 2, Page 282 - 289

On 15 March 2018, the General Court annulled a Commission Decision which considered that the Spanish authorities had not granted state aid in favour of Fred Olsen through some measures relating to the port of Puerto de Las Nieves in the Canary Islands. A competitor, who had complained to the Commission about the said measures, applied for annulment of the Commission’s Decision on the grounds that the Commission should have opened the formal investigation procedure resulting from the fact that it had encountered serious difficulties. Even though the Decision had been appealed on the grounds of procedure, by its nature, the Court had to go into the substance of the case. The line between procedure and substance can be a fine one. Keywords: Opening Formal Investigation; Serious Difficulties; Use of State-Owned Infrastructure.

Marianne Clayton, Maria Segura

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 14 (2015), Issue 1, Page 178 - 184

The CJEU rendered a short, straight-forward judgment on the concept of State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU. In a request for a preliminary ruling, the Court was asked to address whether a tax exemption may be considered compatible with the State aid rules by a national judge who had identified in a first ruling the State aid nature of the measure. An interesting aspect of this case is the use (or rather lack of use) of the Notice on the enforcement of State aid by national courts, which foresees the possibility to ask the Commission for its opinion on the compatibility of a measure as opposed to the frequent requests for preliminary rulings. Keywords: Advantage, Enforcement by national courts, Preliminary ruling procedure, Property tax, Selectivity, Shipbuilding, Tax exemption.