Press Release: State aid: recovery of illegal State aid gets faster as Commission tightens procedures

In 2010, Member States recovered a total of €530 million in State aid granted to businesses before they were notified to the Commission and later found to be incompatible with EU State aid rules. This brings the total amount of aid recovered to €10.9 billion in the last 10 years. The pace of recovery is also increasing with 57% of the illegal aid either recovered or taken to the European court in less than two years. This compares with 48.3% in 2009 and only 26.9% in 2007. However, the progress with the recovery concerns mostly new cases and there is backlog of old cases.