THE LEVEL PLAYING FIELD IN CRISIS MODE 39 European Commission16, the controlling body in the State aid field, can authorise the granting of aid for multiple reasons. Over the past few decades, the European Commission, as the centralised competition authority in the field of State aid, has developed a fairly complex system of exemptions and detailed compatibility conditions based on the relevant articles of the TFEU, which allows aid to be granted for different purposes17. As granting of State aid is generally prohibited, there is a procedure to authorise them exceptionally: Article 108 TFEU requires the Member States to notify all their aid plans to the Commission before implementing them (ex-ante notification obligation), and wait until the Commission authorises the given measure. This obviously can create headaches when a measure needs to be put in effect quickly or within a certain timeframe18. As the duration of State aid procedures is usually long19, and the decisional practice of the Commission has evolved, and the Commission proposed the application of solutions of granting compatible aid without notification. Since the early 2000s, the Commission, based on the empowerment of the Council20, started to introduce and apply the concept of block exemptions in the domain of State aid law. The State aid architecture still remains driven and controlled by the Commission, but in the last twenty years the Member States have granted a higher and higher portion of aid via these block exemptions21. The application of the block exemption regulations is easy: the Commission adopts the regulation with all the general and specific compatibility conditions for certain categories of State aid (e.g. regional, environmental, research and employment aid) and the Member States can grant the aid based on this regulation if they fully comply with all conditions and the aid is compatible with the internal market22, not having the 16 The TFEU also empowers the Council of the European Union to authorise aid granted by a Member State, but this happens quite rarely. 17 The list of these rules is available in https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/legislation/legislation. html (accessed on 10 March 2021). 18 State aid rules also apply to the disbursement of European Structural and Investment Funds, which have a seven-year programming period. The funds allocated to the Member States need to be spent during this period plus three years (the so-called N+3 rule). Funds not spent within this period will be reallocated to the EU general budget. 19 As a positive estimate, one can say that a non-complex case is decided within eight to ten months. However, when the Commission has to open formal investigation procedure under Article 108(2) TFEU, the procedure can last easily two or more years. 20 The current empowerment from the Council is to be found in Council Regulation (EU) 2015/1588 of 13 July 2015 on the application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to certain categories of horizontal State aid (OJ L 248, 24.09.2015, pp. 1-8.). 21 Recent State aid Scoreboard shows that 96% of new measures are introduced are block-exempted. See: https://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/scoreboard/index_en.html (accessed on 1 March 2021). 22 This strict approach has been constantly confirmed by the Court of Justice in the following recent judgments: C-493/14 Dilly’s Wellnesshotel GmbH v Finanzamt Linz (ECLI:EU:C:2016:577), C-349/17
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