Aid

State aid refers to direct or indirect advantages of any kind granted by the state or through state resources that distort or threaten to distort competition by favoring certain companies or sectors of production, thereby affecting trade between member states. This includes, among other things, grants, subsidized loans, and guarantees. If the state selectively grants such aid to companies, this can distort competition within Europe. For this reason, state aid is only permitted in specific exceptional cases and under strict legal regulations set out by the European Commission. The legal framework for this is laid down in Articles 107 to 109 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and in numerous regulations. Detailed information can be found in the links below.

Regulations and guidelines

Notices

Information from the BMWE on state aid law

The following files provide guidance from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE) on EU state aid law. For an initial overview of the relevance to state aid, we recommend reading the file "Guide and Self-Test". 

The funding criteria required for the implementation of the ERDF Operational Programme 2014-2020 and their implementation must comply with EU state aid law. It should be noted that both the European Commission and the European Court of Auditors (ECA) are focusing their audits on the compliance of funded projects with EU state aid law during the 2014-2020 funding period. Therefore, the project manager must document not only the compliance of the funding criteria with EU state aid law, but also – if applicable to the respective project – the compliance with EU state aid law before the projects are approved, in a comprehensible and comprehensive manner. For this reason, if audits under EU state aid law are required for each individual project, this must also be documented in the checklists. The documentation must be submitted to the VB, the KOM, the EUA or the TRH upon request.