State Aid And Sustainability

In December 2019, the European Commission presented the Green Deal, a roadmap for making the EU's economy sustainable and to transform Europe's economy to carbon-neutral by 2050. The competition policy and more particularly the State aid policy has a key role to play in delivering the Green Deal objectives because Europe will need a considerable amount of sustainable investments and Member States will have to make massive investments towards environmental projects.

Such investments may be carried out in a form of state aid, defined as an advantage attributable to a state and financed through state resources, which benefits an undertaking and confers an advantage on a selective basis, distorts or threatens to distort competition and affects trade between EU Member States. State aid is only compatible with the internal market if it is notified and authorised by the European Commission.