Jeroen Dewispelaere

European Networks Law & Regulation Quarterly, Volume 3 (2015), Issue 1, Page 60 - 63

The granting of State aid without prior approval by the Commission is unlawful and exposes the beneficiaries to possible recovery measures. However, it may be difficult to determine whether a measure constitutes State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU. In the energy sector, a typical difficulty is in determining to what extent a regressive tax qualifies as a selective aid measure. In order to avoid all risk, it is best to notify the measure if there is any doubt as to its qualification. Although this seems a very simple rule of thumb, it is one that Member States very often fail to understand. Unfortunately, Belgium is no exception to that.

Jeroen Dewispelaere

European Networks Law & Regulation Quarterly, Volume 2 (2014), Issue 2, Page 176 - 180

In its decision of 2 May 2013, the Commission considered that the yearly compensation in favour of bpost for the delivery of certain public services constitutes State aid within the meaning of Article 107(1) TFEU and therefore assessed its compatibility with the requirements laid down in the revised framework for State aid in the form of public service compensation. Since this decision entails one of the most in-depth Commission decisions based upon this framework so far, it provides very useful insights on how these stricter compatibility conditions will be applied in practice. In particular, it demonstrates that the Commission adopts a rather lenient approach to allow Member States to bring their national aid measures in line with the new EU State aid rules on SGEIs adopted in 2011.

Jeroen Dewispelaere

European Networks Law & Regulation Quarterly, Volume 2 (2014), Issue 1, Page 79 - 83

Throughout 2013, many important decisions have been taken with respect to the functioning of the network industries in Belgium. The energy sector was confronted with the annulment of the electricity transmission tariffs and the partial annulment of the federal transposition of the Third Energy Package. In the telecom sector, it was ruled that the one-off fee which replaced the former one-off licence fee charged to mobile telephone operators in order to guarantee optimal use of radio frequencies is lawful. The postal sector witnessed the European Commission’s approval of the public service compensation for bpost. Finally, in the water sector, Belgium was ordered to pay a substantial fine for failing to comply with the requirements concerning the treatment of urban waste-water.

Jeroen Dewispelaere

European Networks Law & Regulation Quarterly, Volume 1 (2013), Issue 1, Page 109 - 112

On 5 March 2013, the Brussels Court of Appeal rendered a landmark judgment in which it confirmed the plea of Belgacom, the historic telecommunications operator in Belgium, that advice from in-house lawyers benefits from the legal professional privilege and may therefore not be examined by the Belgian Competition Authority. The Court also ruled that the selection of digital files seized during an inspection must be based upon precise, appropriate and proportionate keywords. In particular, there must be a relevant link between the subject-matter and the purpose of the inspection on the one hand and the search term(s) on the other.