State aid
The Competition Commissioner has recently described the EU state aid rules as being more relevant to the well-being of the EU economy than the antitrust and merger rules. We assist our clients in making complaints of unlawful aid, as well as facilitating the approval of aid.
Our recent experience in this field includes:
- advising a company in a knowledge-based industry on the potential state aid implications of an innovative bond issue to be indirectly guaranteed by a European government
- making a complaint to the Commission about state aid to an airline
- advising on state aid and merger issues raised by a major petrochemicals infrastructure project
- accompanying the acquisition and restructuring of a group of companies in the shipyard industry, raising questions of state aid and merger control.