Coyuntura y problemática jurídica de las ayudas estatales en los aeropuertos regionales europeos

The significance of the chosen topic resides on the air transport sector transcendence, more specifically the airport sector, which it has got relevance in the European Union economical and social development. The role of this transport means and their infrastructures are crucial for the achievement of the European Union´s objectives set in their own Treaties. These ones are concerning accessibility and territorial connection, as well as the development of disadvantaged regions. Small and secondary airports could be the key of this development.In accordance to the previously mentioned, these airports present difficulties to achieve a sufficient economical return to survive. European Union aspires to an open market fully focused on free competition; despite they possess a limited market power with respect to its users due to their low passenger traffic volume and low capacity. However European Union is aware of this conflict and the difficulty of reaching a healthy free competition market without a public intervention. For this reason, European Union concentrates their efforts into their prerogatives in competition issue with the aim to optimally control of State aids and to avoid not affected the domestic market.This work is based in the European Commision's previous decisional practice, as well as in the previous Guidelines. In the same way, it proposes a critical view of how State members can finance their airports and users according to new civil aviation and services of general economic interest.