De Minimis Regulation

The European Union has a policy of controlling state aid in order to maintain free and fair competition within the European Union. State aid is defined as the intervention of a public authority (at national, regional or local level), through public resources, in order to support certain companies or producers. As a result, the company receiving such aid has an advantage over its competitors.

As part of this policy, the de minimis rule (de minimis aid), which concerns the Commission's State aid policy for small and medium-sized enterprises, was introduced in 1992, amended in 2006 and is still in force.

The De minimis Regulation (de minimis rule) concerns de minimis State aid and is a European Regulation on the maximum allowable amount of a grant (public money) that can be taken by a legal form or a group of companies, in order to avoid distortions of competition.

1. State aid granted to a company within a period of three years may not exceed a total of two hundred thousand euros (€300,000)
2. For the determination of the three years during the control of De minimis, the date of approval of the state aid is examined and not the date of disbursement of the public money. It should also be emphasized that the amount of aid (Public money) received is calculated and not the total budget of the investment plan.
3. Furthermore, in order to determine the total amount of de minimis aid received by an undertaking, all the aid of the last three years covered by this scheme, which has been received from undertakings affiliated with or cooperating with the requesting undertaking, should be taken into account.
4. The De minimis rule excludes the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, primary agricultural production, export-related aid, aid for domestic use, the coal sector, aid for the acquisition of road transport vehicles and aid for firms in difficulty. The regulation applies to aid granted to companies in all other sectors.