Every private company involved in joining EU programmes (projects implementation consortia) will sooner or later certainly have to deal with the so-called de minimis regulation. In a few words, the money you get as a consortia member are supposed to be sort of state aid which will eventualy lead to distortive effects on competition. EU Public Authorities are allowed to grant economic aid to private companies only within a fixed treshold expressly authorized by the European Commission.  If an SME is involved into a project developed under a EU cofinanced program, and would like to have its activity rewarded, it has to deal with state aid legal framework.

In order to facilitate SME’s participation an exception has been added anyway: there is a class of aid for which notification from EU member states to European Commission is not needed; these are aid of minor importance, as defined by the EU de minimis, which are not presumed to affect competition significantly.

Here is a short summary if you’d rather be working than having a Master’s Degree on euro-intricacy:

• EC Regulation no. 1998/2006 was meant to simplify the operational/legal framework on state-aid. It stated that, below a certain threshold, an aid could be granted to enterprises without the need for the provider to notify it to the European Commission (notification otherwise required). The threshold of aid has then been set to € 200.000 (€ 100.000 for road transport activities) over a period of three fiscal years (present financial year and the two previous ones). Now Public authorities can then grant aid to businesses of any size, under the de minimis rule, without notice.

Hint: aid of no more than € 200.000 granted over a period of three years is not regarded as State aid. read more »