Antitrust and competition

State aid

We have market-leading experience acting for both companies and governments on a range of state aid issues across multiple industry sectors.

Confronted with dynamic global events, rapid digitisation and an increasingly urgent green transformation, state aid issues continue to play a prominent role for companies. In this new landscape, businesses are seeing the increasing value in state aid rules, whether used as a sword to challenge unfair advantages, or a shield to benefit from state support. State aid also provides significant funding opportunities for businesses willing to invest in the twin transformations promoted by the EU – digital transformation (infrastructure, services, innovation) and decarbonisation (the European Green Deal).

At the EU level, an increasing demand – and political support – for government funding to address these challenges has led to a comprehensive review of state aid rules. In addition, state aid rules remain an important factor in transaction planning (privatisations, (re-)nationalisations, capital measures, restructuring). The proposed new foreign subsidies regulation will add further complexity to the legal framework companies need to navigate in the coming years.

Across the Channel, as the UK’s post-Brexit subsidy control regime takes shape, companies must assess the impact of these new rules on their businesses.

Our involvement in cutting-edge cases, and experience gained over many years, enable us to provide clients with informed, strategic, and decisive advice on their most complex, high-profile projects. We represented clients on the major financial crisis cases and since then have been involved in ground-breaking work that reflects the European Commission’s recent areas of focus. This includes its investigations of state aid breaches through national tax measures, where our end-to-end expert advice spanned initial investigations to subsequent litigation in the EU courts.

As well as our unrivalled experience in assisting clients on all aspects of state aid law, over the years we have also built trusted relationships at European Commission and member state levels.