Maria Segura, Marianne Clayton, Aidan O’Connell

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

María Muñoz de Juan

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 17 (2018), Issue 4, Page 483 - 493

Ex post monitoring is a counterpart of the State aid decentralisation process and, as such, is a cornerstone of the current State aid control system. The application of State aid rules is being increasingly decentralised thanks to the significant use of the block exemption Regulations by the Member States. However, this does not mean that the Commission is giving up its powers and obligations under the Treaty. On the contrary, it closely follows — through ex post controls — how State aid measures are implemented by the Member States. This Commission-level monitoring exercise aims to correct the detected irregularities both for the past and for the future and helps to improve State aid rules. It has a measurable deterrent effect. Keywords: State aid; enforcement; monitoring; ex post control; SAM; decentralisation; block exemption regulation.

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 16 (2017), Issue 3,

Leo Flynn

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 16 (2017), Issue 3, Page 335 - 337

Juraj Gyárfaš

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 16 (2017), Issue 3, Page 455 - 469

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.

Christian Berger

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 16 (2017), Issue 3, Page 476 - 481

It is the Member State which is responsible for all State aid granted by authorities on its territory. At the same time, it might not even be aware of aid which may have been granted by a regional or local authority. Local and regional authorities are like the Member State itself active in many fields, both economic and non-economic and sometimes pursue an interventionist aid granting policy on its local territory. It is therefore paramount that the State establishes structures which make sure those local and regional authorities do not grant illegal aid. Member States have adopted different approaches towards this. Most rely on soft measures such as awareness-raising and training, while other have coupled this with more organised enforcement structures or hard legislation. Both central and more federative or devolved Member States face the same problem; the latter has just moved the enforcement responsibility to a different level of government. But in the end, the Member State’s fundamental responsibility remains. Keywords: State Aid Compliance; Local and Regional Level; Enforcement.