56 LEGAL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY Member State notifying the measure to give evidence about the extent of the measure and the quantity of damage directly caused by it. The Commission’s work, of course, went far beyond adopting and adjusting the rules of the Temporary Framework. All the legal bases described or referred to above except for block-exempted or de minimis measures required Member States to notify their measures to the Commission under Article 108(3) TFEU. The gravity of the pandemic and the resulting crisis is illustrated by the fact that in 2020, between March and the end of the year, the Commission adopted more than 600 decisions80 (including Temporary Framework, Article 107(2)(b), Article 107(3)(b) and Article 107(3)(c) TFEU measures) that authorised Member States’ measures adopted (including modifications to measures) to combat the economic effects of the pandemic. The amount of aid authorised is also a striking number: according to statistics made available by the Commission, in the one and a half months after the adoption of the Temporary Framework (between 19 March and 8 May 2020), the Commission authorised 1.9 trillion euros of aid for COVID-19 related relief in total, which increased to 2.3 trillion euros by the end of June and 3.1 trillion euros by the end of the year. These are very high amounts even if, admittedly, the actually used or disbursed aid is conceivably only a fraction of the total approved budget of the measures authorised by the Commission (but, to be fair, they exclude non-aid measures and aid that can be implemented without a Commission decision)81. A conclusion that can be drawn from the chronology of the evolving regulatory background is that, on the whole, the rules of aid granting during the pandemic and the economic downturn have been relaxed swiftly, especially under the Temporary Framework, with aid ceilings increased, new aid categories introduced and existing ones tweaked in a way that gave Member States more and more options. The following section will discuss the categories of the Temporary Framework and show examples of how these legal grounds were used to tackle the problems of the tourism sector and the related industries. 80 Based on the Commission’s State aid case register, available in https://ec.europa.eu/competition/elojade/isef/ (accessed on 10 March 2021). 81 Sources: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_838 (accessed on 1 March 2021), https://www.euractiv.com/section/competition/news/massive-german-state-aid-to-virus-hitfirms-others-in-eu-doing-as-much-or-more-vestager/ (accessed on 1 March 2021).
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