Sophie Bertin is a senior advisor to Covington in their Financial Services and Antitrust practice. Her current focus is on financial services topics, ranging from State aid, implementation of regulations, interplay between various regulations, including the new data protection rules; as well as the impact of new technologies (like Blockchain) on the financial services business models and resulting competition challenges. Sophie Bertin is also founder of Parnima Consulting and founder and CEO of Serapy, consulting firms.
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Regulation (EU) 2022/2560 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market (FSR) entered into force on 12 January 2023 and will start to apply as of 12 July 2023. The FSR creates a brand new instrument to fill a regulatory (...)
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On 28 October 2022, the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted the second amendment to its Temporary Crisis Framework for State Aid measures to support the economy following the aggression against Ukraine by Russia (the “Framework”). The second amendment to the Framework extends its (...)
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On 19 October 2022, the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted its new State aid Framework for research, development and innovation (the “2022 RDI aid Framework”). This instrument governs Member States’ investment in RDI activities. It is an important response to the 2020 Commission (...)
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On 4 May 2022, the European Parliament (the “Parliament”) adopted its position on the proposal of the European Commission (the “Commission”) for a Regulation on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market (the “Foreign Subsidies Regulation”) (see our alert on the proposal). It confirms (...)
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On 28 April 2022, the Subsidy Control Bill (the “Bill”) received Royal Assent, becoming the Subsidy Control Act 2022 (the “Act”). The Act lays the basic framework for the new UK-wide subsidy control regime, which is now expected to come into force in Autumn 2022. Although the Act primarily (...)
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On 23 March 2022, the European Commission (the “Commission”) adopted a Temporary Crisis Framework for State Aid measures to support the economy following the aggression against Ukraine by Russia (the “Framework”). In a similar fashion to the temporary framework that the Commission has adopted (...)
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On 25 November 2021, the Commission adopted its revised Communication on the Criteria for the analysis of the compatibility with the internal market of State aid to promote the execution of important projects of common European interest (“IPCEI”). This is particularly relevant for companies (...)
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Companies that benefit from non-EU state support or subsidies will soon face heightened scrutiny in the European Union (EU) as the European Commission unveiled on May 5 its proposed Regulation on foreign subsidies distorting the internal market. As its name suggests, the proposed Regulation (...)
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On March 8, 2021, the European Commission (EC) approved the state recapitalization of up to €39.7 million, comprising a capital injection and a waived dividend payment for the 2019 financial year. The measure was notified to the EC under the EU’s Temporary Framework for State aid to support (...)
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On 17 February 2021, the General Court of the European Union (“General Court”) in Cases T-259/20 and T-238/20 dismissed Ryanair’s challenges to pandemic aid packages introduced in France and Sweden in order to support the domestic airline sector. The judgments are the first ones where the (...)
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The Commission’s Temporary Framework for State aid measures supporting the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic (the “Temporary Framework”) is proving to be a success. More than 200 Member State schemes and individual measures have been cleared under the Temporary Framework since its adoption (...)
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On 17 June 2020, the European Commission (‘Commission’) published a White Paper “on levelling the playing field as regards foreign subsidies” which outlines a proposal for a series of new investigatory and enforcement tools, intended to identify and counteract the possible distortions of (...)
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On 8 May 2020, the European Commission (“Commission”) adopted a second amendment (the “New Amendment”) to the Temporary Framework for State aid measures to support the economy during the COVID-19 outbreak (the “Temporary Framework”) (see our previous post on the Temporary Framework here and on (...)
