TOURISM AND STATE AID 115 compatible”. Regarding the latter group of exemptions, the European Commission has wide discretion to define the conditions for compatibility, especially if this decision involves assessments of an economic and social nature, which must be made within an EU context13. Essentially, this assessment is a balancing between the interest of having an undistorted internal market or granting State aid to achieve specific common interest objectives (such as cohesion, environmental protection, employment, funding research and development). During the last general revision of the State aid rules – the State aid Modernisation initiative14 –, the Commission decided to elaborate certain general compatibility conditions, which have to be met in case of all aid to consider them as compatible: a) the aid has to contribute to an objective of common interest and should not serve only the interest of the beneficiary; b) the aid has to be proportionate to the pursued objective, as well as appropriate, meaning that the Member State has to prove that the objective could not be achieved by other means (e.g. regulation); c) the aid must have an incentive effect, it has to change the behaviour of the beneficiary to do something more with the aid, than without it. This has to be supported generally by showing the contrafactual scenario (what would happen in the no aid scenario and what would happen if the aid is granted). Moreover, the negative effects on competition and trade between the Member States of the aid have to be limited to the strict minimum necessary; and d) the granting of an aid of more than 500,000 € has to comply with the transparency requirements15. As mentioned above, the Commission has a wide discretion when setting how these principles are interpreted in case of different types of aid, being able to adopt guidelines and frameworks in order to publish the compatibility conditions of the aid.These soft lawpieces aremaking the compatibility assessmentmore transparent 13 C-110/03 Belgium v Commission (ECLI:EU:C:2005:223) paragraph 68, Case C-303/88, Italy v Commission (ECLI:EU:C:1991:136), paragraph 34. 14 Previously, the Commission revised the State aid rules in the frame of the State aid Action Plan (2004-2007). 15 Source: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/competition/transparency/public?lang=en.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==