Press Release: State aid: Commission approves German rescue aid package for Hypo Real Estate Holding AG

The European Commission authorised, under the EC Treaty’s rules on state aid, loan guarantees totaling €35 billion that the German Federal Government, together with a group of German financial institutions, intends to provide for covering Hypo Real Estate's re-financing needs until April 2009. The Commission concluded that the measures comply with EU rules on rescue aid. The approval of the rescue aid measure has no bearing on whether any future measures taken by the German authorities to support a restructuring would be similarly approved. Any such measures would have to be assessed on their own merits according to the rules on restructuring aid to establish whether aid was involved, and if so whether sufficient compensatory measures to offset potential distortions of competition were put in place.