When Kelyn Bacon (now Mrs Justice Bacon) and I set up the UK State Aid Law Association in 2012 we could not have anticipated that some 10 years later most of the United Kingdom would no longer be in the EU State aid regime (but that one part of the UK would still be partly in it) and that the UK would have developed its own novel system of subsidy control.
UKSALA has – by organising events and by providing a forum for articles – contributed first to the better understanding of State aid/subsidy control law and later to the development of the new UK regime. One important aspect of what we have done is that our work – both events and the blog – has always been available for free: a point that is particularly important for public sector lawyers given minimal budgets for subscriptions and conferences.
However, the new, free, Subsidy Control Insider newsletter, supported by Lexxion, effectively does what UKSALA has been doing for 10 years (and, indeed, those involved in running the UKSALA blog and recent events are also involved with that newsletter). There therefore now seems to be little point in maintaining this site for further articles or running a separate programme of events.
For the moment, I will keep the UKSALA site online, though there will be no further posts on it. But please sign up to the Subsidy Control Insider newsletter (following the link above) and – if you have thoughts or insights on the UK subsidy control regime that you would like to share – do contact the editors of the newsletter.
I and all those involved in UKSALA are grateful to everyone who has subscribed and contributed: and particular thanks go to Christopher Vajda KC, the last UK national judge at the Court of Justice of the EU, who has supported UKSALA as its president throughout, and to Kelyn Bacon, who has contributed so much time and enthusiasm both before and after her elevation to the Bench. I hope that this letter is not an “adieu”, but merely an “au revoir”, and that the UKSALA community regathers around the new Subsidy Control Insider newsletter.