Reflecting Environmental Protection Requirements in the EU State Aid Policy

Abstract: The Member States of the European Union push hard to address modern environmental challenges they face and achieve their environmental targets. However, in doing so, they need to comply with European Union law: the State aid policy and the ‘polluter pays’ principle often seem as obstacles before the Member States to implement their national environmental policies. On the one hand, State aid control is essential to maintain a high level of competition in the internal market, while on the other, environmental protection is among the priority objectives of the European Union. Moreover, environmental protection requirements must be integrated into all policy areas, including State aid. The purpose of this work is to study how the environmental protection and its requirements are integrated into the State aid policy when these two legitimate interests – a competitive economy by controlling State aid and a green economy by promoting higher environmental protection – intersect.