2.5 State aid procedure

In the previous sections, the substantive rules on State aid have been discussed. The present section discusses the procedural rules. Article 107 TFEU contains the substantive State aid rules, whereas Article 108 TFEU deals with the procedural issues. The procedural rules are not only laid down in Treaty provisions. Several regulations have been adopted that contain detailed procedural rules. The most important of these regulations is Council Regulation No 659/1999 of 22 March 1999, also known as the Procedural Regulation.1 Before the adoption of the Procedural Regulation, the only procedural rules were the ones laid down in the predecessors of Article 108 TFEU.2 The procedural rules were clarified in the decisional practice of the Commission and the case-law from the Court. The purpose of the Procedural Regulation was to codify this practice.3 In 2015, the Council adopted Council Regulation (EU) No 2015/ 1589 of 13 July 2015, which replaced the Procedural Regulation from 1999. For this reason, I will speak of the 1999 Procedural Regulation and the 2015 Procedural Regulation.

The 2015 Procedural Regulation sets out four types of State aid procedures: i) new aid, ii) unlawful aid, iii) misuse of aid, and iv) existing aid. These pro-cedures will be discussed in the following subsections.