Rescue of Financial Institutions: An Overview of European Commission Frameworks and Practice on State Aids to Financial Sector in the Current Global Crisis

Abstract

This paper refers to the analysis of state aids granted by member states to financial institutions in the European Union, in the context of the current worldwide financial crisis. In order to test the present framework established by the European Commission from 2008 and its real practice, we start from the Decision adopted by the European Commission in the 1995 Credit Lyonnais case, which was an individual act, showed some interesting Commission general considerations about state aid to the banking sector, many of them are today included in current Commission communications.