Regulation 2013/1407 - Application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU to de minimis aid - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 352/1

State funding meeting the criteria in Article 107(1) of the Treaty constitutes State aid and requires notification to the Commission by virtue of Article 108(3) of the Treaty. However, under Article 109 of the Treaty, the Council may determine categories of aid that are exempted from this notification requirement. In accordance with Article 108(4) of the Treaty the Commission may adopt regulations relating to those categories of State aid. By virtue of Regulation (EC) No 994/98 the Council decided, in accordance with Article 109 of the Treaty, that de minimis aid could constitute one such category. On that basis, de minimis aid, being aid granted to a single undertaking over a given period of time that does not exceed a certain fixed amount, is deemed not to meet all the criteria laid down in Article 107(1) of the Treaty and is therefore not subject to the notification procedure.

The Commission has, in numerous decisions, clarified the notion of aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) of the Treaty. The Commission has also stated its policy with regard to a de minimis ceiling below which Article 107(1) of the Treaty can be considered not to apply, initially in its notice on the de minimis rule for State aid (3) and subsequently in Commission Regulations (EC) No 69/2001 (4) and (EC) No 1998/2006 (5). In the light of the experience gained in applying Regulation (EC) No 1998/2006, it is appropriate to revise some of the conditions laid down in that Regulation and to replace it.

It is appropriate to maintain the ceiling of EUR 200 000 as the amount of de minimis aid that a single undertaking may receive per Member State over any period of three years. That ceiling remains necessary to ensure that any measure falling under this Regulation can be deemed not to have any effect on trade between Member States and not to distort or threaten to distort competition.

For the purposes of the rules on competition laid down in the Treaty an undertaking is any entity engaged in an economic activity, regardless of its legal status and the way in which it is financed (6). The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that all entities which are controlled (on a legal or on a de facto basis) by the same entity should be considered as a single undertaking (7). For the sake of legal certainty and to reduce the administrative burden, this Regulation should provide an exhaustive list of clear criteria for determining when two or more enterprises within the same Member State are to be considered as a single undertaking. The Commission has selected from the well-established criteria for defining ‘linked enterprises’ in the definition of small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC (8) and in Annex I to Commission Regulation (EC) No 800/2008 (9) those criteria that are appropriate for the purposes of this Regulation. The criteria are already familiar to public authorities and should be applicable, given the scope of this Regulation, to both SMEs and large undertakings. Those criteria should ensure that a group of linked enterprises is...