Recovery Orders in State Aid Proceedings: Lessons from antitrust?

Abstract

Recovery orders in state aid cases are often made difficult by problems in identifying the correct beneficiary – these are compounded by Member States reorganising the business. Drawing on principles from antitrust law, this paper suggests that the beneficiaries in state aid proceedings should be those undertakings that benefit from the aid in an anticompetitive way. This suggestion reduces the amount of aid that is recoverable but is more in line with the aim of the remedy.