About the project
The Member States are important actors in the European economy. They adopt market regulation, grant State aid, are important customers for many undertakings and are also themselves owning and operating undertakings in liberalised markets. In these activities, the States act either as public authorities or as market economic operators and for these different purposes they apply varying degrees of control measures, depending on the activity. The compatibility of the activities of the State with EU market law decisively depends on the presence or absence of control, as defined in EU secondary regulation and in the case-law of the Court of Justice.
The purpose of this project is to analyse the rationale for and content of these different concepts of control and to examine whether there is basis for a common concept of control across different areas of law 5State aid law, competition law and public procurement law). Further, an assessment of whether Article 4(2) TEU imposes limits to the ECJs creation of requirements for State control will be undertaken.