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Donzelli, Simone; Willemot-Nieuwenhuys, Bernadette --- "New trends in State aid enforcement by national courts: damages claims and the State aid cooperation tools" [2020] ELECD 351; in Parcu, L. Pier; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco (eds), "EU State Aid Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020) 141

Book Title: EU State Aid Law

Editor(s): Parcu, L. Pier; Monti, Giorgio; Botta, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: New trends in State aid enforcement by national courts: damages claims and the State aid cooperation tools

Author(s): Donzelli, Simone; Willemot-Nieuwenhuys, Bernadette

Number of pages: 29

Abstract/Description:

Competitors can suffer damage due to the national authorities’ granting of unlawful and incompatible aid. In such cases, they can start a claim for damages against the granting authority before national courts. The previous studies on that subject, made for the European Commission in 2006 and 2009, showed that this possibility was rarely relied upon in the Member States. The first section of this chapter will examine, on the basis of a very recent case from a French court, the possibilities for third parties to introduce a claim for damages against the aid grantor to compensate the damages suffered as a consequence of the breach of the notification obligation. This possibility requires three elements: the fault (that is, the breach of the standstill obligation by the Member State), the serious breach and a direct causal link between the breach and the damage. This chapter analyses the general EU case law in that field and highlights some recent examples in national law. The second part of the chapter is focused on the forms of cooperation between the Commission and national courts in State aid proceedings. The 2015 Procedural Regulation codified the tools available for national courts to request information and opinions from the European Commission. In addition, it introduced the possibility for the Commission to submit amicus curiae observations to national courts, mirroring the set of cooperation tools already available for antitrust matters. This section presents the scope of the cooperation tools and their procedural aspects, and analyses their use and trends. Finally, it discusses their current and potential role from the wider standpoint of State Aid Modernisation.