The EU Commission (“EC”) has, for the second time, expanded its Temporary Framework of 19 March 2020 (“Temporary Framework”) to provide national governments with further guidance and additional tools to support distressed companies amidst the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. As noted in our last blog post covering the first amendment to the Temporary…

On 31 March 2020, the Ukrainian Supreme Court (the “Supreme Court“) upheld the first decision of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the “AMC“) on the unlawfulness of state aid. In November 2018, the AMC recognised as unlawful state aid in the form of subsidies granted by the local government authority to the public utility company…

Our previous blog post covered the EU Commission’s (“EC”) Temporary Framework of 19 March 2020 (“Temporary Framework”), which aims at enabling national governments to use the full flexibility of State aid rules to support the economy in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the adoption of the Temporary Framework a number of Member States…

Overview Given the unprecedented challenge faced by European businesses in the wake of the public health measures being adopted, the EU and its Member States are taking extraordinary measures to minimise the economic fallout from COVID-19. Over the coming weeks, Member States will make available billions in financial aid an in a speech on 13…

The General Court of the European Union has issued two awaited rulings in the Starbucks[1] and Fiat[2] cases. The length and the depth of the analysis made by the judges of the General Court should be acknowledged, even if certain key issues are perhaps too rapidly dealt with. Although the Commission lost in Starbucks, the…

Following the entry of EU-Ukraine Association Agreement (“Agreement”), Ukraine adopted basic state aid regulations which became effective from August 02, 2017. Bringing Ukrainian state aid regulations in compliance with the EU legislation is expected to come soon to a more definitive stage. Despite the progress made during the first two years when the state aid…

On 22 July 2019, the European Commission published a new State aid Recovery Notice on its website (publication in the Official Journal of the European Union will follow).[1] The new Notice replaces the Recovery Notice of 2007[2] which was introduced to address the slow and sometimes inadequate implementation of State aid recovery decisions by EU…

At the time of writing, there is still a lot of uncertainty as regards the question of whether the United Kingdom will leave the European Union with an exit deal on 31 October 2019.  However, what is clear is that State aid regulation will continue in the UK irrespective of the way in which the…

Lawyers across Europe holding their breath while awaiting the General Court’s ruling on the Belgian Excess Profits case were doubtlessly disappointed. On Valentine’s Day, the General Court reminded the European Commission that “tough love” is always a possibility, but the Commission’s defeat is no mortal blow. Its decision was annulled on more or less “technical” grounds,…

On 17 December 2018 the European Commission issued the public version of its decision in the McDonald’s case (SA.38945). The Commission found, contrary to its initial conclusion in the opening decision, that Luxembourg did not grant illegal State aid to McDonald’s as a consequence of the exemption of income attributed to a US branch. If…