Two more publicly funded aids for airports cleared by the European Commission under EU State aid law

In the recent Airportsof Verona and Brescia and Airportof Groningen cases the European Commission found that the financial aid measures granted by local authorities to, respectively, the manager of the airport of Brescia and Verona in Italy and of Groningen in the Netherlands, were compatible with the internal market.
Airports of Verona and Brescia was decided on the basis of the 2005 Aviation Guidelines. The measure examined was an investment aid in the shape of a € 12.7 million capital injection into the manager of the airports to finance the building of new infrastructure. The aid beneficiary managed two regional airports. Verona had a traffic of approximately 3 million passengers and Brescia of 1 million. The airport of Brescia was also very active in the cargo sector. The Commission held that the aid was granted on the basis of a feasible business plan and that the public money was necessary to bridge a funding gap in the projects. Crucially, the measures did not distort competition to the detriment of neighbouring airports. The latter were congested and the publicly funded projects were aimed to increase much needed capacity to meet a growing demand for air transports. Therefore, the project should improve mobility by lowering congestion at neighbouring airports.

Interestingly, Airport of Groningen was one of the first state aid aviation cases to be decided under the new 2014 Aviation Guidelines. The aid recipient was a manager of a small local airport with 200,000 annual passengers. The measure was operating aid of around € 19 million. The Commission found that the notified measures had an incentive effect, encouraging the aid recipient to strengthen its business model and rationalise its operations with the view to reach break even in the long term period at the end of which aid should be phase out. The business plan submitted by the Dutch authorities indicated that break even should occur in 2017 and operating aid should be phase out by 2016. Airport of Groningen Airport of Groningen provides for an illustration of the, hopefully flexible, approach of the Commission to the application of the new Guidelines to operating aid granted to small local airports that, typically, tend to be unprofitable.

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