The Legal Impacts of COVID-19 in the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Industry

8 State aid to achieve specific common interest objectives (such as economic and social cohesion, environmental protection, employment, funding research and development etc.). During 2012-2014 under the so-called State aid Modernisation initiative 27 , the Commission decided to elaborate certain general compatibility conditions, which have to be met in case of all aid to consider them as compatible: a) the aid has to contribute to an objective of common interest, and should not serve only the interest of the beneficiary; b) the aid has to be proportionate to the pursued objective, as well as appropriate, meaning that the Member State has to prove that the objective could not be achieved by other means (e.g. regulation); c) the aid must have an incentive effect, it has to change the behaviour of the beneficiary to do something more with the aid than without it. This has to be supported generally by showing the counterfactual scenario (what would happen in the no aid scenario, and what would happen if the aid is granted). Moreover, the negative effects on competition and trade between the Member States of the aid have to be limited to the strict minimum necessary; and d) the granting of an aid of more than 500,000 € has to comply with the transparency requirements 28 . As mentioned above, the Commission has a wide discretion when defining how these principles are interpreted in the case of different types of aid, as the Commission has the right to adopt guidelines and frameworks in order to publish the compatibility conditions of the aid. These soft law items make the compatibility assessment more transparent and foreseeable and also tie the hands of the Commission 29 . Once the Commission adopts a guideline on the compatibility conditions of certain type of aid, it cannot declare an aid measure incompatible if the conditions defined in the guidelines are met. Although State 27 Previously, the Commission revised the State aid rules in the frame of the State aid Action Plan (2004- 2007). 28 Source: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/competition/transparency/public?lang=en ( accessed on 10 March 2020). 29 See the following judgments: 310/85 Deufil v Commission (ECR EU:C:1987:96) paragraph 22, C-313/90 CIRFS a.o. v Commission paragraphs 34 and 36, C-311/94 Ijssel-Vliet (ECR, EU:C:1996:383) paragraph 42 and more recently, C-526/14 Tadej Kotnik a.o. v Državni zbor Republike Slovenije (ECLI:EU:C:2016:570).