Prior Control of New Notified Aid

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the concept of ‘new aid’. Article 1(c) of the Procedural Regulation defines new aid as ‘all aid, that is to say, aid schemes and individual aid, which is not existing aid, including alterations to existing aid’. All measures to grant or alter aid must therefore be considered to be new aid, and their compatibility with the internal market should be checked by the European Commission before they can be granted. New aid has to be notified to the Commission before being granted. The Member States are also bound to submit any ‘plans to alter aid’ for a preliminary review by the Commission. When an aid scheme has been approved by the Commission, this approval covers future applications of that scheme, which do not therefore have to be examined afresh by the Commission. In its scheme approval decision, however, the Commission is entitled to make an exception to that rule and expressly lay down that certain cases of application should still be notified individually on the basis of Article 108(3) TFEU.