170 COMPETITION LAW IN TOURISM As a reminder, the GBER allows the Member States to grant certain aids without prior notification to the Commission. Member States have to send a short notice on the aid or the aid scheme to the European Commission, twenty (20) working days following its grant or entry into force and must include it in its annual report on the application of the GBER to the European Commission. CONCLUSION The current European regulatory framework for the development of new air routes falls short in achieving its goal of helping airports and airlines to launch new destinations. Under the private operator principle, airports may grant airlines commercial incentives based on a sound and credible business plan, but such incentives are not state aid and thus escape the notification obligation. The Commission’s practice is now well-established and was validated in 2018 by the General Court of the EU in the Pau, Nîmes, Angoulême and Altenburg-Nobitz Airports cases. If the public support qualifies as an aid because it is not profitable for the airport, it may be authorised under the Aviation Guidelines as start-up aid for new routes in the form of rebates on airport charges up to 50% for three (3) years maximum. Prior notification by the Member State to the Commission is required. Nevertheless, such aid has had little success and is ineffective. Indeed, as confirmed in the Lübeck airport case, it is possible to set up rebates on airport charges that do not constitute state aid under certain broad conditions and therefore do not have to be notified to the Commission. De minimis aid may be granted to airlines, but they cannot exceed 200,000 € per airline per country for three (3) fiscal years, being, therefore, of limited use to boost the development of an airline at an airport, especially in large countries. The European Commission has recently condemned other form of promotion of new routes or marketing support, and so the legal options are very limited. Last year the European Commission organised a public consultation on the review of its Aviation Guidelines. Unfortunately, it focuses on operating aid to small regional airports, and this issue was not included in the consultation. Nevertheless, the European Commission is invited to rethink start-up aid for new routes. My proposal would be to revert to marketing support but under fewer and simpler conditions than those provided for in the 2005 Aviation Guidelines. For instance, such marketing support could be limited to a maximum
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