State aid

When financial assistance is provided from the public purse, we help public bodies and private companies to consider state aid issues, redesigning the assistance to avoid potential problems where we can, or guiding the European Commission approval process where needed.

Recent work includes formal applications for state aid clearance of grant programmes on behalf of a government department and advising a local authority on rural broadband state aid issues. We have also provided training for local authorities about what constitutes state aid and carried out due diligence for a private business to ensure that competitors are not being given an unfair advantage.

We help our clients to identify potential state aid issues and structure aid to fit within the European Commission’s block exemption, de minimis rules and sector frameworks. We also support with notifying schemes to the European Commission for approval.

Our team includes lawyers who have previously worked in-house in the public sector. This means we are better able to put ourselves in our public sector clients' shoes and, in turn, help our private sector clients navigate and understand the system.

Find out more about our full International Trade practice.

Experience

• Advising several private service providers on state aid issues in respect of the receipt of public funding through the European Regional Development Fund including the application of block exemption and De minimis rules.
• Providing an organisation who promote energy efficiency with state aid compliance advice and legal opinions, as well as to a number of public bodies and organisations (central government, local government and Non Departmental Public Bodies) funded by public money on infrastructure and other projects where state resources are applied.
• Advising a cultural arts and media trust on state aid issues arising from the application of a grant for an innovation project including on the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER).