Competition and State Aid

Since its first edition in 2007, this masterful book has established itself as the preeminent resource for practitioners who must interpret, on a case-by-case basis, the relation of State aid to EU inter-state competition. This third edition – updated and integrated by eminent professors, EU law practitioners and lawyers of Greenberg Traurig Santa Maria, a prominent law firm that for years has distinguished itself for handling State aid cases before EU and Member State courts – brilliantly captures the current state of this vexed relationship. Detailing numerous additional case profiles from the years since the first edition, the book combines deep familiarity with the relevant features of EU law and the expertise that the contributors have built in their everyday practice. Among the considerations connected with the ‘State aid phenomenon’ and the cases arising from it, the seventeen expert contributors explore and clarify such issues and topics as the following:

• the Commission’s increasing policymaker role;

• the importance of focusing on the actual elements that demonstrate the distortion (or the potential distortion) of competition and the existence of real prejudice to trade;

• exceptions, General Block Exemption Regulation and the Temporary Frameworks;

• State aid procedural rules;

• the principles of legitimate expectations, legal certainty, and proportionality as the discriminating elements of recovery orders;

• the relevance of internal tax procedures;

• rights of defence of undertakings involved in State aid proceedings;

• the locus standi of private parties (aid recipients and their competitors) before the EU courts;

• cooperation and conflict between the Commission and national courts on State aid matters;

• State aid and insolvency proceedings;

• National Recovery and Resiliency Plans in the framework of State aid rules;

• differences and interplay between State aid rules and the new Foreign Subsidies Regulation;

• State aid in the United Kingdom following Brexit; and

• State aid rules in specific sectors (e.g., agriculture and fishery, banking and finance, digital transition, environment and energy, sport and transport).

As in the previous editions, the approach throughout is eminently practical, with detailed attention to procedure before the Commission, EU courts, and national courts. Because of the contributors’ specialist know-how in handling a wide variety of relevant situations from many different points of view, the book’s authority can hardly be doubted. It is sure to be of great value to practitioners in all EU Member States, as well as to economists, policymakers, and jurists dealing with European law at all levels.