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

36 The scheme, as approved by the Commission, included two aid categories. The compensation for the foregone revenue was granted as 3.12 TF aid to those service providers that qualified for aid under 3.12 TF (their revenues dropped by 30% in the eligible one-month period compared to the same period of 2019 and had sufficient losses – uncovered fixed costs – to cover the compensation amount) and the rest received the aid as 3.1 TF aid. It was expected that most eligible undertakings would qualify for 3.12 TF aid because of the lockdown anyway, but the addition of 3.1 TF aid as a secondary aid category made sure that most businesses would receive the compensation made available by the state 146 . As a final note to Temporary Framework measures, it should be mentioned that a number of Member States have introduced so-called “umbrella schemes” 147 , i.e. schemes encompassing only the Temporary Framework rules (often multiple aid categories), with the Member States free to define the exact rules of sub-measures to be applied under such “umbrellas”. Applying these schemes allows Member States to go ahead and react to changes of the economic situation without the need for asking for the Commission’s approval again. In this way, the Commission gave authorisations to a number of Member States to launch aid schemes as they see fit but in line with the Temporary Framework. These general umbrella schemes are typically not limited to particular sectors, but it is possible to limit them to individual industries (e.g. Ireland as recently as in March 2021 gained Commission approval to an umbrella scheme for tourism 148 , which is also a sign that the crisis far from over yet if new schemes are still introduced in early 2021). Possibly because of the limited scrutiny of the Commission over umbrella-type schemes, with the fourth amendment 149 to the Temporary Framework, the Commission introduced a special reporting obligation according to which Member States will be required to file a 146 So far, Member States have commonly adopted “umbrella schemes” to apply Section 3.12 aid without restricting them to specific sector. See for example Italy (SA.59827), Spain (SA.59723), Denmark (SA.60094) or Slovakia (SA.59996). 147 See for example Spain’s (SA.56851) or France’s (SA.56985) umbrella schemes, which were later updated to include additional aid instruments. 148 Commission decision C(2021)1622 final of 8 March 2021 (SA.61236 (2021/N) – Ireland COVID-19: Tourism Business Continuity Scheme). 149 Point 43 of the fourth amendment.