Caroline Buts, Malgorzata Agnieszka Cyndecka, José Luis Buendía

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 20 (2021), Issue 3, Page 397 - 426

Stefania Bello, Germano Guglielmi

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 19 (2020), Issue 4, Page 440 - 451

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

Phedon Nicolaides

European State Aid Law Quarterly, Volume 17 (2018), Issue 3, Page 412 - 418

A tax measure can be selective in relation to both direct and indirect beneficiaries. A beneficiary that passes on all benefits to third parties may still derive a selective advantage. The selectivity of such advantages have to be determined on the basis of their effects, not the form of the tax. Keywords: Selectivity; Direct beneficiaries; Indirect beneficiaries; Passing on advantage.