The Member States recovered in 2010 a total of 530 million euro in State aid granted to businesses before they were notified to the Commission and later found to be incompatible with EU State aid rules. Although figures show progress on recovering these funds, this improvement mostly relates to new cases and not to the resolution of old ones. In 10 years, the total amount of aid recovered is estimated to 10.9 billion euro.

The European Commission has accelerated its procedures and toughened its rules for failure to comply with EU law or decisions, including on State aid control. This process has allowed Member States to recover a total of 530 million euro in 2010, in subsidies found to be illegal under EU State aid rules, bringing the total aid recovered since 2000 to 10.9 billion euro.

Although these figures are quite positive, the aid still to be recovered amounts to an estimated 1.8 billion euro. However, the pace of recovery has also increased over the last years with 57% of the illegal aid either recovered or taken to the European court in less than two years. This, compared with 48.3% in 2009 and only 26.9% in 2007, show significant improvement.

In total 10 recovery cases were successfully closed in 2010 in 5 Member States, while 54 were still pending at the beginning of 2011 in 12 Member States. Last year the Commission asked the Court of Justice to impose penalties on Italy and Spain for failing to comply with recovery decisions despite the Court having previously condemned them for non implementation of the decisions. It also sent to France a letter of formal notice, the first step in infringement proceedings, for not recovering aid awarded in the form of tax exemptions from corporate tax for takeovers of ailing companies.

Of the 54 cases pending at the beginning of 2011 more than 20 are before the Court of Justice either as first or second (with penalties) referral. In another 13 cases, either the beneficiary repaid the aid on a blocked account pending Court procedures, or the beneficiary is insolvent and the Member State properly registered its claims in the insolvency mass. The remainder are mostly recent cases and are being followed up or they involve companies that have become insolvent (5 cases).

In the future, recovery will be monitored even more strictly and infringement proceedings will be initiated as soon as it becomes obvious that the government concerned is not going to take the necessary steps to recover the money.