TOURISM AND STATE AID 131 in the preliminary phase. For this reason, the Court annulled the Commission decision. One can conclude that the judgment has hit the Commission hard and where it is the most painful, the compatibility assessment. Although the Commission enjoys a wide margin of freedomwhen carrying out this assessment, the judgment remind us that this freedom is not limitless, it requires a careful analysis from the Commission, and if no clear-cut solution can be found at the end of the preliminary investigation, it needs to open a formal investigation, the public phase of the investigation, allowing other parties to express their views and opinion. The judgment also shows that even a “small case” can bring up question of principles and can have far-reaching consequences. 4. COMMISSION DECISIONS RELATED TO THE TOURISM SECTOR The Commission’s case database56 contains a high number of tourism decisions. As a general trend, one can observe that since the adoption of the first block exemption regulation, in 2008, the number of tourism cases has sharply lessened. This trend is even more apparent since 2014, with the adoption of the current general block exemption regulation. Even though there is no specific State aid rule for this sector, there are several Commission decisions worth mentioning, in order to evaluate and analyse the Commission policy in this field. One of the first Commission decision57 related to complex touristic projects was adopted in 2002, after a formal investigation. The Commission received a State aid complaint, in 1997, concerning the development of Terra Mítica, a theme park in Spain, which mentioned several measures in favour of the theme park. The Commission could clear many of them in the preliminary investigation phase, but it had to open a formal investigation in relation to six measures. The first notable statement in the decision was when the Commission dismissed the Spanish argument that it was only a regional theme park, with local catchment area, hence not having an effect on trade between the Member States. The Commission concluded that the park attracted visitors from major European cities, therefore its financing could have an impact on intra-Community trade – with this statement, the Commission has made it clear that certain touristic 56 Source: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/index.cfm?clear=1&policy_area_id=3. 57 Commission Decision 2003/227/EC on various measures and the State aid invested by Spain in “Terra Mítica SA”, a theme park near Benidorm (Alicante) (OJ L 91, 08.04.2003, pp. 23-37).
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