2.5.5 Interested parties

Strictly speaking, the State aid procedure is a procedure between the Commission and the Member State concerned.1 However, State aid may affect many other economic actors; such as the beneficiary undertaking, competing undertakings and other Member States. Some of these actors fall under the definition of “interested party”.2 And as a consequence, they have certain rights in the State aid procedure: they can submit comments and complaints.

The rights of interested parties are laid down in Article 24 of the Procedural Regulation. Article 24(1) provides that, once the Commission has taken the decision to initiate the formal investigation procedure, an interested party may submit comments. It is worth stressing that this “right to be heard” only applies to the formal investigation procedure. Only then is the Commission obliged to allow the undertakings concerned to submit their comments. As the Court has pointed out in its case-law, there is no such obligation in the preliminary investigation procedure.3

Pursuant to Article 24(2) of the Procedural Regulation, any interested party may submit a complaint to inform the Commission of any alleged unlawful aid or any alleged misuse of aid. This involvement of interested parties is important to the effectiveness of State aid control. The Commission has investigatory powers; it can conduct inquiries on its own initiative. This is one way to detect unlawful aid or misuse of aid. Another way to detect unlawful aid is when interested parties, such as competitors, inform the Commission about unlawful aid. The fact that complaints are ‘an essential source of information for detecting infringements of the EU rules on State aid’ has been recognised by preamble 13 of Regulation 734/2013 (i.e. the Regulation that amended the 1999 Procedural Regulation).