european economics sprouted when the community State aid monitoring became an economic issue.

In 2005, under the impetus of Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the European Commission launched a broad State aid reform with the motto “Less and better targeted State aids”. A major component of this reform was the definition and thereafter the implementation of a refined economic approach in State aid law. The latter, fully inspired on microeconomic theory (market failures, incentive effect, distortions of competition) consists in balancing positive and negative economic effects of an aid so as to establish whether it is in line with EU State aid rules.

This refined economic approach was equipped for the first time in 2007 with the entry into force of the new Community framework for State aid for Research and Development and Innovation. It is fully translated within the procedure of individual notification with detailed assessment to the European Commission, which applies when a business receives a considerable aid amount (several million euros) for a strategic project.

From 2007 onwards, Marc Isabelle actively participated in developing new tools and best practices applied to State support within this renovated Community framework, as the person in charge of individual notifications of funding granted by a new French State agency (Agence de l’Innovation Industrielle, merged with Oseo in 2008). During the first two years of enforcement of the new economic approach, the European Commission has built more than 50% of its decision-making for RDI individual aids on the basis of notifications from AII.

In 2009, Marc Isabelle started european economics to capitalise on the expertise developed during his numerous interactions with the European Commission. Since then, european economics has doubled its revenues each year and is expected to continue growing at this pace in 2014 with the continuity of the French massive funding programme “Investissements d’Avenir”, worth € 34 billion, along with the penetration of new markets.