Valtiontuki ja kilpailuoikeuden rajapinta/EN

Suomeksi

State aid regulation is a close relative of competition law: it restricts the conduct of Member States — not undertakings — by preventing public authorities from granting undertakings an economic advantage that would distort competition in the internal market. The topic is particularly important where the client is a public body, a state-owned company, or an undertaking that receives or is seeking public funding.

Avainkohdat

• Mistä on kyse: State aid within the meaning of Article 107 TFEU is in principle prohibited, unless it has been approved under an exemption (e.g. the General Block Exemption Regulation) or notified to and approved by the Commission before implementation.
• Miksi sillä on kaupallista merkitystä: Aid that has not been notified and approved by the Commission is unlawful from the moment of implementation, and it may later have to be recovered with interest — this applies to the recipient of the aid as well, not only to the authority that granted it.
• Mikä menee useimmin pieleen: State aid can also arise in situations where a public actor does not think it is granting "aid" at all — for example, the sale of land below market terms, a guarantee, or a capital injection can meet the criteria for state aid if the terms deviate from what a private market operator would have accepted.

The Criteria for State Aid

State aid is an economic advantage granted from public funds that favours a particular undertaking or branch of production and that distorts or threatens to distort competition and affects trade between Member States (Article 107(1) TFEU). Under settled case law, the criteria for state aid require four cumulative conditions to be met: (1) the measure is financed from state resources or is otherwise attributable to the state, (2) the measure confers a selective economic advantage on the recipient, (3) the measure distorts or threatens to distort competition, and (4) the measure affects trade between Member States. The form of the measure is irrelevant — besides grants, state aid can also arise from tax relief, guarantees, capital injections, or transactions on terms more favourable than market terms with a public body.

Notification Obligation and Exemptions

As a general rule, state aid must be notified to the European Commission in advance and may not be implemented before the Commission has approved it (Article 108(3) TFEU). There are, however, key exemptions from the notification obligation:

• The General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) — exempts a broad range of forms of aid (including regional aid, research and development aid, and environmental aid) from the notification obligation, provided the conditions of the regulation are met (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014).
• De minimis aid — aid that does not exceed €300,000 over any three-year period per single undertaking does not constitute notifiable state aid at all (Regulation (EU) 2023/2831, Article 3(2); applicable from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2030).

Exemptions from the Prohibition (Article 107(2) and (3) TFEU)

As an exception to the general rule in Article 107(1) TFEU, Article 107(2) and (3) TFEU provide for cases in which state aid may be, or is, compatible with the internal market. The legal effect of the two paragraphs differs materially from one another.

Article 107(2) TFEU — aid that is compatible with the internal market

In these cases the Commission has no discretion: the aid is compatible with the internal market directly under the Treaty. This paragraph covers:

• aid having a social character, granted to individual consumers, provided that it is granted without discrimination related to the origin of the products concerned;
• aid to make good the damage caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences;
• aid granted to the economy of certain areas of the Federal Republic of Germany affected by the division of Germany.

Article 107(3) TFEU — aid that the Commission may consider to be compatible

In these cases the Commission has broad discretion to assess the compatibility of the aid on a case-by-case basis. This paragraph covers, among others:

• aid to promote the economic development of areas where the standard of living is abnormally low or where there is serious underemployment;
• aid to promote the execution of an important project of common European interest or to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of a Member State;
• aid to facilitate the development of certain economic activities or of certain economic areas, where such aid does not adversely affect trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common interest;
• aid to promote culture and heritage conservation, where such aid does not affect trading conditions and competition in the Union to an extent contrary to the common interest;
• other categories of aid as may be specified by decision of the Council on a proposal from the Commission.

Käytännön huomio

The exemptions in Article 107(2) and (3) TFEU concern the substantive compatibility of the aid with the internal market — i.e. the assessment of eligibility itself. They are worth keeping conceptually separate from the procedural simplifications described above (the GBER and the de minimis regulation): these do not create new, independent grounds for approval, but merely exempt certain predefined aid measures from the ex-ante notification obligation under Article 108(3) TFEU. In other words, they represent a procedural streamlining of the same substantive compatibility assessment, not a separate substantive ground for approval.

Recovery

If aid has been implemented without prior notification and Commission approval (so-called unlawful aid) and the Commission subsequently finds the aid incompatible with the internal market, the Member State must recover the aid with interest from the recipient (Council Regulation (EU) 2015/1589, Article 16). The Commission's power to recover aid is limited by a ten-year limitation period, which begins to run on the day the unlawful aid was granted to the recipient (Regulation (EU) 2015/1589, Article 17). A recovery risk can also materialise in the context of a merger or acquisition if the target company has previously received potentially unlawful aid — this is worth mapping during due diligence in the same way as other competition law risks.

Käytännön huomio

When dealing with public bodies or companies owned by them, it is worth routinely assessing whether an arrangement has the characteristics of state aid — in particular where the terms deviate from what an independent private operator would have been prepared to accept (the so-called market economy investor principle).

See Also

• Competitive Neutrality
• Fundamentals of Public Procurement and Its Interface with Competition Law
• Fundamentals and Sources of Competition Law

Sources

Lainsäädäntö ja lähteet tarkistettu 12.9.2026.