Acknowledgement

This chapter was supported by the national grant scheme VEGA in the Slovak Republic, the project No 1/0624/18 Business Models of Regional Airports in the Context of State’s and the EU’s Transport Policies. The idea of the project was generated from the activities of the COST-ATARD TU1408 project.

Notes

1 The text with the EEA relevance.
2 http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/register/. Searching this database is not easy, because several cases are not registered in English or because the titles of cases do not reveal the subject matter sufficiently.
3 Regional Airports Programme 2015—2019 contains the core airport management Operational Expenditure Subvention scheme (OPEX scheme) and the Regional Airports Capital Expenditure grant (CAPEX Scheme). The CAPEX Scheme originated from a previous scheme, Regional Airport — Capital Expenditure Grant Scheme 2006—2010, approved by the EC and prolonged by the EC to 2014.
4 In the EU state aid database, the respective decision was not at our disposal.
5 Chinas Xanga Group won the Debrecen local council’s tender in 2011.
6 The investment was into the improvement of the safety and security of the airport. The owner declared in the notification that the airport operator would not receive any benefit from the notified investment project.
7 The case of the capital airport of the Slovak Republic’s Bratislava Airport, which shares the common catchment area with Vienna Airport (the capital airport of Austria), illustrates that the supranational regulatory framework of the EC need not satisfactorily reflect some politically sensitive issues, such as the investment development of (some) capital airports in the EU, even under the new liberated regime of notification duties of 2017.
8 Only the French version of the text is available on the EU’s respective database.
9 This is a Chinese conglomerate.
10 On 25 October 2018, the EC opened an in-depth investigation into measures in favour of Ryanair at Frankfurt-Hahn airport. Under the investigation were certain marketing agreements between the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and Ryanair concluded before 2009, when the state was not the controlling stakeholder of the airport operator; several other agreements governing the financial relationship between Ryanair and the airport operator when the airport operator was controlled by the state; and two measures — a sale of land to an aircraft maintenance company and the sale of a plot of land — when the airport operator was controlled by HNA (European Commission, 2018e).
11 Such agreements (e.g. in the form of marketing agreement) are still exploited by several LCCs. See the respective decision of the EC in which the marketing agreements concluded between the local Association for the Promotion of Touristic and Economic Flows and Ryanair at the airport of Montpellier Méditerranée (1.879 million passengers in 2018) were found to be illegal under state aid rules. The investigation of the case started on the basis of a complaint by a competitor of Ryanair (European Commission, 2019).
12 Via electronic notification on 23 July 2013, the Spanish authorities notified an aid scheme aiming to provide support for the opening of new air passenger transport services connecting the airports of the outermost region of the Canary Islands to other airports in the EU and beyond (European Commission, 2014b). The scheme assumed that the period in which contracts for start-up aid for the opening of a new destination might be concluded was until December 2017; however, aid contractually agreed could still be disbursed until December 2020.

13 Slovakia is a further member state that has airports only of a regional nature (in terms of the number of passengers) in its territory.
14 This documents that the same issues of start-up aid may be handled in different articles of notified cases.
15 L’intensité maximale de l’aide est fixée, hors inflation, à 50 % des coûts éligibles sur 3 ans. Cette intensité pourra être déclinée de façon dégresive (ex: 75% la première année, 50% la deuxième et 25% la troisième année). (The text of the respective EC’s decision is available only in French.)
16 The deficit or surplus in gross operating profit against the forecast profit in percentages is multiplied by the achieved operating profit.
17 Bratislava Airport in Slovakia is planned to be privatised through a long-term concession (see www.mindop.sk/media-5144/tlacove-spravy-2726/udelenie-koncesie-pre-letisko-v-bratislave-bude-mat-tri-fazy). Due to the vicinity of Vienna Airport, the indirect privatisation seems to be the most feasible way to improve the volume of passengers and the profit and loss results of Bratislava Airport.
18 On 24 May 2019, the EC launched targeted consultation on the ex post evaluation of the Aviation Guidelines 2014.
19 The peripeteia with state aid to airports was notified by Romania in 2010. See more at Commission Decision of27/9/2016 On State Aid SA.30931 (2011/C) (exN 185/2010) implemented by Romania for Romanian regional airports (European Commission, 2016g, 2016h).
20 One example is the Slovak Republic.