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Cover -- Titel -- Imprint -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Economic and Non-economic Activities -- 1.1. Health Insurance Based on Social Solidarity -- 1.2. The Non-economic Nature of Certain IT Services for Higher Education -- 1.3. Public Funding of Infrastructure without State Aid -- 1.4. Water Development -- 2. State Resources -- 2.1. Price Regulation and State Control -- 2.2. State Control without Imputability to the State -- 2.3. The State Acting as a Regulator -- 3. Advantage -- 3.1. Advantage Must be Proven, Not Assumed -- 3.2. Private Investor Principle -- 3.3. Employees' Social Security Contributions and Advantage to Employers -- 3.4. Direct v Indirect Advantages: The Case of Sardinian Airports -- 3.5. Market Economy Operator Principle: The Case of FIH -- 3.6. MEIP-Compliant Bank Recapitalisation: CEC Bank -- 3.7. Market Economy Operator Test -- 3.8. Pari Passu Investments -- 3.9. The Time Horizon of a Private Investor -- 3.10. Exclusive Rights and Legal Monopolies -- 3.11. How to Price a Guarantee -- 4. Taxation -- 4.1. Taxation of Multinational Companies: The Apple Case - A Political Setback for the Commission, but a Victory on Principle -- 4.2. The Commission's primary line of reasoning -- 4.3. The Commission's subsidiary line of reasoning -- 4.4. Turnover Taxes -- 5. Trade -- 5.1. A Real Estate Deal that Does not Affect Intra-EU Trade -- 6. De minimis Aid -- 6.1. De Minimis Aid -- 7. General Block Exemption Regulation -- 7.1. Compliance with the GBER and the SME Criteria Has Become more Difficult -- 8. SMEs -- 8.1. The Concept of SME, Indirect Control by Public Bodies and New Problems for Public Universities and Research Organisations -- 9. Undertakings in Difficulty -- 9.1. Identification of Undertakings in Difficulty -- 10. Article 107(2)(a) TFEU -- 10.1. Public Subsidies to Households Can Be State aid.

State aid law - A constantly evolving field that continued to be marked by new interpretations and applications in 2014. In this accessible and topical compilation, Phedon Nicolaides casts an critical eye on State aid rules and judgments from 2014. The book represents the first annual review of legal and policy developments of the preceding year and is made up of articles originally published on a weekly basis on Lexxion's StateAidHub.eu.The compilation is conveniently grouped into sixteen thematic chapters covering important issues such as "Selectivity," "Infrastructure Projects," or "Recover

1. Introduction : the main issues -- 2. Problem defined : policy errors -- 3. A bit of a theory -- 4. Anatomy of errors -- 5. Avoidable errors -- 6. Can organizations make mistakes? -- 7. Developing organizational capacity for error avoidance -- 8. Rules and norms in policy implementation -- 9. Incentives for error avoidance -- 10. Capacity for policy implementation -- 11. Obligations of EU membership -- 12. Synthesis and recommendations : policy experimentation and 'nudging' public administrations -- 13. Concluding remarks.

The European Union (EU) has a compliance problem: there are persistent failures in the implementation of EU rules and policies by the member states. This book examines how policy implementation may be improved. It explains the nature of policy mistakes, proceeds to consider how individual public authorities and organizations can avoid making policy mistakes and then, in the light of its findings, derives how the EU may induce its member states and their public authorities to improve their compliance with EU rules and policies. Basically, this is a book about how the right incen.

The Court of Justice made legal history in Ledra Advertising when it found that the EU could incur non-contractual liability even for acts that formally fell within the intergovernmental sphere. In Chrysostomides, however, by ruling that the Euro Group is not an EU 'institution', the Court has made it largely impossible for individuals to obtain judicial protection. The decisions of the Council that give effect to agreements in the Euro Group can be drafted in innocuous and general language, minimizing or even expunging any liability. The powers of the Commission to act against such agreements in the Euro Group are also unclear and probably non-existent.

The Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany has invented a new and impossible test of proportionality to declare as ultra vires the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Weiss. Instead of understanding proportionality as the least interventionist means of achieving a certain policy objective, it defines it as the balancing between conflicting policy objectives which in this case are monetary and economic policy. This is not the concept used by the Court of Justice. This definition of proportionality is intended as a substitute for the principle of conferral and whether the European Central Bank (ECB) encroached on economic policy. However, if monetary policy is to be effective, it must impact economic policy. Had the ECB attempted to balance monetary and economic policy effects, it would have infringed Article 127(1) TFEU that requires that the support of economic policy by the ECB is without prejudice to price stability which is the objective of monetary policy. The Federal Constitutional Court did not appreciate the significance of the fact that the ECB buys public bonds from private investors and that the interjection of private investors deprives Member States from the ability to sell unlimited amounts of bonds at prices that would enable them to run indefinite budget deficits.
Monetary policy, economic policy, proportionality, ECB, public sector asset purchase programme