This chapter of EU State Aid Control deals with the element in Article 107(1) TFEU that only interventions by the State or through State resources can qualify as State aid in the sense of the EU State aid rules. As is the case with respect to the other elements of Art. 107(1) TFEU, no specific legislation exists on the issue of State measures. However, the Commission Notice on the notion of State aid as referred to in Article 107(1) TFEU (the “Notice on the notion of State aid”),1 published on 19 May 2016, covers this topic extensively.
Before the Notice on the notion of State aid, private practitioners and EU Member States had to rely on case law as their only source of information on the assessment of whether a measure was indeed a “State measure” in the sense of Art. 107(1) TFEU. For that reason, this chapter will discuss a large number of case law.
This chapter has been published in EU State Aid Control; Law and Economics, 2017.
Read the chapter of Rein Wesseling and Marieke Bredenoord-Spoek.