136 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM Similarly, the Commission excluded the presence of the aid in case of a ski resort in Greece67, where the unique features of the case allowed to conclude that all the users are coming from the vicinities. Exclusion of the possibility to use the ski slopes for touristic purposes was underpinned by the fact that there were no accommodation facilities around, and users usually buy weekly tickets instead of daily passes. The last time the Commission applied State aid rules related to an undertaking active in the tourism sector was on 14 October 2019, when it allowed Germany to grant 380 million euros to rescue aid for the air carrier Condor, which went into financial difficulties due to the liquidation of its parent company, Thomas Cook, one of the largest and certainly the oldest travel company in Europe. As of the writing of this article, the decision has not been published yet68, but from the press release69 it is clear that the Commission applied the general State aid rules, the rescue and restructuring guidelines during its assessment, when it declared that the rescue aid is compatible with the internal market. The case is also a good example that the Commission applies the State aid rules without further specification to cases related to the tourism sector. 5. STATE AID RULES APPLICABLE IN THE TOURISM SECTOR Although some guidance can be drawn from the jurisprudence of the EU Courts and the decisional practice of the Commission summarised above, they do not cover all possible interventions linked to tourism development. Moreover, there are no specific State aid rules for tourism. The sector is mentioned only once in both the secondary legislation and the soft law. Generally, regional aid schemes cannot be designed to favour only one or a handful of pre-determined sectors, as this would be contrary to the wider objective to contribute to the economic development of the given region. However, this limitation does not apply to schemes aiming for the tourism sector only70. This specific treatment is probably due to the fact that tourism does not fit under one single NACE code. Moreover, 67 Source: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/cases/240000/240000_1235429_111_2.pdf. 68 Case No. SA.55394. 69 Source: https://ec.europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-6080_en.htm. 70 Under Article 13(c) GBER regional aid in the form of schemes which are targeted at a limited number of specific sectors of economic activity; schemes aimed at tourism activities, broadband infrastructures or processing and marketing of agricultural products are not considered to be targeted at specific sectors of economic activity.
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