HOW TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW ROUTES 145 In 2016, the European Commission adopted its Notice on the notion of State aid2 that codified its decision practice and the European jurisprudence on each of the above-mentioned criteria. This Notice offers guidance to public authorities and undertakings on whether public spending falls within or outside the scope of EU State aid control. Under certain conditions, State aid may be declared compatible with the common market by the European Commission under Article 107.2 and 3TFEU. The Commission adopts communications, guidelines and frameworks to set the conditions of compatibility of each category of aid. 1.2. The procedural obligations According to Article 108.3 TFEU, aid measures must be formally approved by the European Commission prior to their implementation in order to insure their legality: “The Commission shall be informed, in sufficient time to enable it to submit its comments, of any plans to grant or alter aid. If it considers that any such plan is not compatible with the internal market having regard to Article 107, it shall without delay initiate the procedure provided for in paragraph 2. The Member State concerned shall not put its proposed measures into effect until this procedure has resulted in a final decision”. Therefore, the Member State concerned may not grant aid to the beneficiary until the Commission has reached a final decision following a formal notification to DG COMP (‘standstill obligation’). The notification procedure enables the Commission to establish the existence of aid and to assess its compatibility with the common market, which entails the analysis of the aid project, its objective and its compliance to the substantive conditions the Commission imposes to authorise such aid. Following the EU enlargement and the considerable increase in the number of notifications of State aid, the Commission was empowered by the Council to adopt exemption regulations or decisions to allow the Member States to grant aid without prior notification. Based on such regulation, the aid granted is deemed compatible under certain conditions, and the administrative formalities towards the Commission are very light. The Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014 of 17 June 2014 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the internal market in application 2 OJ C 262, 19/0772016, pp. 1–50.
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