This paper analyzes airline reactions to the COVID-19 crisis in the spring months of 2020 along the typical crisis response strategies of retrenchment, persevering, innovating, and exit. Based on the ...content analysis of 148 news items filtered from a daily aviation industry newsletter published during the unfolding of the crisis in Europe (from January 6 to June 2), the paper specifies and differentiates European airlines’ strategic responses, outlines key implications for the post-COVID-19 competitive landscape, and raises attention points for managers and policy makers.
•Analyzes European airlines strategic reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic.•Differentiates and specifies European airlines responses along retrenchment, persevering, innovating and exit strategies.•Governments might act as change agents; preventing the collapse of large carriers, but hindering efficient decision-making.•Suggests impact on business model convergence; network carrier and low-cost carrier propositions likely drift apart again.•Suggests cementation of industry structures; the consolidation that was underway is halted at least temporarily.
In case of unlawful State aid, Art. 24(2) of Regulation 2015/1589 guarantees the possibility to submit a complaint to “any interested party”. The preamble to Regulation 2015/1589 even encourages the ...submission of such claims. Interested parties are defined by Art. 1(h) of this Regulation as “any Member State and any person, undertaking or association of undertakings whose interests might be affected by the granting of aid, in particular the beneficiary of the aid, competing undertakings and trade associations”. The fact that an entity belongs to one of the categories indicated in this provision (e.g., beneficiary or trade associations) does not determine its status of interested party – a key factor is proving that the interests of a particular entity have been affected by the (potentially) unlawful aid. The concept has been developed in case law. Among many detailed issues in judgements delivered either on the basis of Regulation 2015/1589 or the preceding Regulation 659/1999, the CJEU has discussed conditions under which a status of interested party could be attributed to undertakings in no direct competition with a recipient of State aid. Special attention is drawn to a beneficiary of State aid as a potential “interested party” – this category of entities is mentioned in Art. 1(h) of Regulation 2015/1589, but a form that needs to be used in order to submit a complaint does not list a beneficiary as a subject entitled to submitting a complaint. The article presents a review of CJEU cases in this regard, and aims at defining the current state of interpretation of “interested party” that opens a gate for particular entities to submit a complaint.
This paper discusses the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to reconsider the foundations of the global aviation system. There is much evidence that air transport creates opportunities as well as ...risks. While the former accrue to businesses and individuals, risks are imposed on society. Pandemics, in which aviation has a role as a vector of pathogen distribution, as well as the sector's contribution to climate change are examples of long-standing negative externalities that continue to be ignored in assessments of aviation's economic performance and societal importance. As commercial aviation has shown limited economic resilience throughout its history, this short paper questions whether a return to business-as-usual, supported by very significant State aid payments, is desirable. The volume growth model championed by industry and aviation proponents may have to be replaced with an alternative model of a slimmed air transport system that is economically less vulnerable and accounting for its environmental impacts.
•Establishes that air transport creates health and climate change risks.•Highlights aviation's poor economic performance and continued reliance on State aid.•Advocates an alternative economic model based on a slimmed air transport system.
A much debated issue in the discussion about COVID-19 state aid to firms is the extent to which these measures keep non-viable firms afloat. What are the characteristics of firms that receive aid and ...are they viable in the long term? Based on a survey of 1,151 firms in the Netherlands, mainly SMEs, we find that on average, government support goes to better-managed firms and to those with low turnover expectations and high turnover uncertainty. This suggests that COVID-19 state aid tends to go to firms that are most in need of it now and are more likely to be viable in the long term, as indicated by the quality of their management practices.
•Many firms were confronted with substantial turnover decreases and high turnover uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic.•The COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing restrictions led to rapid and massive state aid to firms in many countries.•A key policy question is whether COVID-19 state aid reaches the right firms: those that need it most and are also viable.•We approximate the viability of firms with the quality of their management practices.•Dutch COVID-19 state aid went to better-managed firms and firms with low turnover expectations and high turnover uncertainty.
This paper represents an excerpt of a doctoral thesis, that is dedicated to the investigation of processes of sports institutionalization in the city of Blumenau/SC and its relationship with the ...formation of a sports habitus. Using diverse sources, including statutes, newspapers and laws, the study analyzes four sports clubs and bureaucratic entities responsible for municipal sports management. It is important to mention that Blumenau stands out in Brazil for the training of high-performance sports athletes. For this specific section, we limited to study the leagues and sports commissions that managed the sport in Blumenau between the years 1941 and 1988. We aimed to understand the configuration of the political-sports sphere of the city, analyzing 46 municipal laws. Through Norbert Elias' Competitive Games Theory, as an analytical basis, it was examined how entities, inserted in a network of social interdependence, transitioned from models of amateur associativism to a bureaucratic configuration of state support for sport.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the global economy, which has led to significant turbulence in the business sector by creating new challenges, directly affecting revenues, ...profitability and liquidity. Company’s liquidity has suddenly become a challenge for businesses around the world, and securing liquidity has become a key factor to economic survival. In order to preserve the stability of the economy during the pandemic, the governments of numerous countries have created policies aimed at mitigating its effects on the economy. Among others, state subsidies that were directly aimed at maintaining the liquidity of micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Republic of Croatia were provided. Companies that operate in industries that have a significant dependence on tourism sector were particularly affected, experiencing the most intense negative impact on business. The goal of this research is to provide an overview of existing research regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business and on the effectiveness of state aid during the pandemic. This research examines the effectiveness of state aid for preserving companies’ liquidity in the Republic of Croatia that operate in the industry of providing accommodation and preparing and serving food. The results showed that the measures to maintain liquidity were effective since the companies that used aid for maintaining liquidity had significantly fewer problems with liquidity compared to those that did not. Further research should focus on examining the effect of all government subsidies in the Republic of Croatia on the liquidity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article contributes to our understanding of American education politics by exploring when and why states redistribute K–12 education dollars to poorer schools. It does so by examining three ...explanations for intrastate changes in progressivity: court-ordered finance reforms, political trends, and demographic changes. Using state-level data from 1995 to 2016, we find mixed evidence that progressivity increased following a court-ordered school-finance overhaul. Rather, we show that changes in progressivity were most consistently tied to changes in student demography: As students became poorer, or more racially diverse, lawmakers created less progressive finance systems. The article concludes by discussing what these findings mean for advocates seeking to protect and advance gains in education-spending progressivity.
As college promise programs proliferate across the United States with noted intentions to promote access through increased affordability, it is necessary to understand the relationship between these ...programs and other forms of financial aid, including loans. Using federal, state, and program-level data, we leverage a natural experiment to estimate causal impacts of the nation's first statewide program (Tennessee Promise) on students' borrowing behaviors in a community college system. In the difference-in-differences framework, we find robust evidence to suggest Tennessee Promise reduced the percent of first-time, full-time students borrowing by 8-10 percentage points on average after implementation-an over 40% decline-and reduced the average community college cohort loan by 230-360 USD (nearly 32%). While consistent with prior work on grant aid, these findings are among the first to explore promise students' financial outcomes. We discuss these results in relation to Tennessee Promise's programmatic features and identify important implications for policy and research.
In this paper, I will analyze the state aid granted in the member countries for the recovery of accommodation and food services, severely affected by the pandemic, coming to the conclusion that in ...Romania the measures were applied later than in other countries. Thus, through the "HoReCa Scheme", the beneficiary companies in Romania have received state aid recently, after almost 2 years of deep crisis. In the meantime, more than a third of companies have gone bankrupt. Starting from the presentation of state aid in European legislation and the need for it to support economies, I will then draw attention to the major impact of the pandemic on the HORECA sector at European level.
State aid and fair competition Nikolić, Ljubica
Zbornik radova Pravnog fakulteta u Nišu,
2020, Volume:
59, Issue:
88
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
State aid (giving economic advantage to certain economic entities or groups of economic entities by granting subsidies and loans under more favorable conditions, state guarantees, tax breaks and tax ...exemptions, selling public property under particularly favorable conditions, etc.) may be economically justifiable but entails the risk of distortions of market competition. The EU has strict rules in the area of providing and controlling state aid, which aim to minimize state aid while minimizing competition. Fulfilling some of the commitments undertaken in the EU accession process, the Republic of Serbia passed the State Aid Control Act in 2009, which ceased to be valid with the adoption of a new State Aid Control Act in 2019. The share of state aid in Serbia's GDP is substantial but insufficiently transparent, which justifiably raises the issue of its impact on fair competition. The reform of the Serbian state aid policy is necessary, first and foremost, in order to significantly reduce this aid and to properly select the beneficiaries. The starting point for an effective state aid policy is legal regulation and its implementation but, above all, the genuine independence and responsibility of the institutions in charge of controlling its implementation. It is necessary to find modalities that will ensure that the general interest and economic efficiency are above individual interests. This paper aims to promote awareness about the impact of state aid on economic efficiency, to analyze the legal solutions and the institutional framework in this field in Serbia, and to present the EU state aid policy. The emergence of excessive, improperly selective and uncontrolled state aid can have profound negative consequences on social well-being, for which reason it is necessary to properly standardize and implement the rules envisaged in this area of law.
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