National legislation

To transpose the provisions of the Procedural Regulation (Council Regulation (EC) No 659/1999 and Council Regulation (EU) 734/2013), Finland has adopted the Act on the Application of Certain State Aid Rules of the European Community (300/2001, available in Finnish and Swedish only). The Act lays down provisions on the recovery of aid, inspections to undertakings and the related executive assistance by the police. The Act also allows for issuing a decree on national arrangements concerning the aid notification procedure.

The Government Decree on the aid notification procedure (89/2011, available in Finnish and Swedish only) includes detailed provisions on the procedure for notifying the Commission of aid schemes and individual aid as well as on exemptions from the notification procedure, such as the procedures for de minimis aid and aid covered by the General Block Exemption Regulation. The Decree also covers the submission of information related to the monitoring and control of State aid.

The Act on the Obligation Concerning the Transparency and Information Dissemination of Economic Activities Binding on Certain Undertakings (19/2003, available in Finnish and Swedish only) concerns the Commission’s possibilities of supervising compliance with the EU competition and State aid rules in the Member States. Both public and private undertakings fall within the scope of the information dissemination requirement laid down in the Act. To be included in the scope, private undertakings must tend to public service tasks along with their own commercial activities (‘services of general economic interest’, Article 106(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union).

The purpose of the Act is to provide the Commission with a tool for ensuring that no aid is channelled to public undertakings against State aid rules. The Act also ensures that the Commission is able to verify that the compensations paid for meeting public service obligations do not constitute aid for the undertakings’ other commercial activities. The Act is not applicable to e.g. undertakings whose annual turnover remains below EUR 40 million.

Further information: elisa.fagerstrom(at)gov.fi  and samuli.miettinen(at)gov.fi