The EU Court of Justice orders to pay a penalty of €80,000 per day for failing to fully recover incompatible State aid (Commission / Italy)

Non-recovery of Incompatible State aid Is Costly* Introduction The 2020 Temporary Framework for State aid to combat covid-19 has a much wider scope in comparison to other State aid regulations and guidelines. Normally, State aid regulations and guidelines exclude, for example, undertakings in difficulty, undertakings active in certain sectors [e.g. shipbuilding], export aid, aid that is granted on condition that domestic products are used or aid granted to undertakings that have not yet repaid incompatible aid. The only explicit exclusion in the current Temporary Framework concerns undertakings that were in difficulty before 1 January 2020. Consequently, a question that has been repeatedly asked during the past month is whether Member States are allowed to grant State aid on