The Pandemic and Criminal Law – A Look at Theory and Practice in Germany

This article provides an overview of the topic of the pandemic from the perspective of criminal law theory and practice in Germany. First of all, the major criminal offences of bodily injury and murder are discussed in the context of infecting a person with the Coronavirus and the (possible) consequences of having Covid-19, such as risk of death. The dilemmatic situation of triage, i.e., allocating limited intensive care resources, is illustrated in relation to the same offences. Then, the more specific crimes that came to the fore in the course of the pandemic are addressed. Subsidy fraud due to the state aids intended to compensate for the financial damage in the marketplace because of pandemic-related measures, and issuance or use of incorrect health certificates for exemption from the obligation to wear a face mask fall within this scope. Finally, the administrative offences law of the German Infection Protection Act was discussed, primarily with regard to regulations that violate the principle of legal certainty.

DRŽAVNA POMOĆ ZA ISTRAŽIVANjE I RAZVOJ I INOVACIJE ZA KOJU SE PRETPOSTAVLjA DA JE KOMPATIBILNA SA UNUTRAŠNjIM TRŽIŠTEM

Capital for conducting R&D projects is relatively more expensive than for ordinary investment. That is why public support i.e. state aid is necessary. Preferred type of state aid for research & development and innovation is direct funding in the form of grants. This type of state aid generally belongs to state aids that may be considered to be compatible with the internal market. If a new state aid compatible with the internal market European Commission must find out separately for every notified aid. But if state aid for research & development and innovation is awarded under conditions laid down by Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014 declaring certain categories of aid compatible with the internal market in application of Articles 107 and 108 of the Treaty, there is a legal presumption that state aid is compatible with the internal market and at the same time it is exempted from the notification requirement. State aid that is considered compatible with the internal market can be given for: research and development projects, research infrastructures, innovation clusters, innovation by SMEs, process and organisational innovation and research and development in the fishery and aquaculture sector.

Public procurement and innovation

Innovation has come to the forefront of EU public procurement. Directive 2014/24/EU has given contracting authorities in the Member States a new award procedure to pursue innovation, namely the innovation partnership. Still a number of issues remain open, notably concerning the allocation of intellectual property rights that may call for the application of State aids rules. Further guidance is thus expected from the Commission.

Foreign Subsidies, Distortions and Acquisitions

The world trade system’s bedrock was laid more than seventy years ago and its architecture and structural principles were shaped by the societal paradigm of western democracies. The last two decades have seen the admission of various government-dominated economies to the WTO. This raised serious paradigmatic challenges. The system tailored to the needs and characteristics of western democracies proved to be inadequately equipped to frame government-dominated economies. This paper addresses one of these new challenges: government subsidies. First, it gives an overview of the status and treatment of product and service subsidies in WTO law and the gaps and shortcomings that result in the system’s failure to address trade-distortive state aids. Second, it examines the European Commission’s White Paper on Levelling the Playing Field as Regards Foreign Subsidies (“White Paper”), which ushers a comprehensive European response to the problems raised by subsidization in international trade. Third, the paper analyzes the WTO framework that governs and confines unilateral actions targeting foreign subsidies. Fourth, the paper makes a proposal for a complementary way to address the world trade system’s “subsidies problem”.

State aid to airports as a problem of competition in the EU

The paper deals with the issues of state aid to airports in the context of pandemic and competition in the European Union. Covering the current pandemic, the paper brings findings on the number of state aid cases, forms of state aids, chronology of state aids, and the time duration between the notification and the decision of European Commission. In the conclusions, old member states of the European Union are compared with newer member states in this regard. As it shows that European Commission understands current aviation situation and approves measures notified by the Member states of Union.

De minimis state aid

In this paper the author analyses de minimis state aid as an exception from the principle of prohibiting the state to help some undertakings in order not to privilege them among other undertakings and to violate their equality on the market. Author explains the notion of de minimis aid, justification of this exception from the prohibition of granting the state aid, privilege that its provider and beneficiary enjoy in comparison with other types of allowable ("compatible") state AIDS, as well as the methods of preventing the circumvention of rules about its granting. Th e author compares the rules of European Union and Serbia in this question, pointing to differences between them. Th e conclusion is that Serbia regulates de minimis aid superficially and vaguely, with important deviations from the EU law. Besides, author contemplates the adequacy of the EU allowable sum of de minimis aid within Serbian economic conditions.