EU study: Increasingly consistent application of state aid law by national courts

National courts are applying EU state aid law increasingly consistently. This is the result of a European Commission study on the enforcement of state aid law by the national courts in all 28 EU member states. Among other things the study also contains, in the country reports, an overview of the most important state aid judgments in the EU between 2007 and 2018. The country report for Germany was prepared by an Oppenhoff team led by partner Dr. Andrés Martin-Ehlers.

Despite the generally stricter enforcement of state aid law, however, the German courts do not always comply with Union law and the judgments of the European courts; sometimes even ignoring them.

Dr. Andrés Martin-Ehlers commented "Considerable differences, such as those between the Federal Administrative Court and the European Commission or the General Court (European Union) in the case "Tierkörperbeseitigung" (rendering of animal carcasses), are increasingly likely to become a thing of the past. State aid law is going to become even more established in Germany in the future."

Enterprises should therefore not rely on a failure to classify grants as state aid. Only recently, in its "Commission Notice on the Recovery of Illegal and Incompatible State Aid" (2019/C 247/01), the EU Commission formulated new rules for the strict recovery of illegal state aid.

The complete study results including the individual country reports can be found at https://state-aid-caselex-accept.mybit.nl/report

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