Consultation Response to the European Commission’s Draft
Revised GBER
This consultation response is submitted as a contribution to the European Commission’s
public consultation on the revision of the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER). The
response is informed by practical experience from Danish Research and Technology
Organizations (RTOs).
1. General remarks
We welcome the Commission’s ambition to simplify State aid rules, reduce administrative
burdens and strengthen Europe’s research, innovation and testing ecosystem. The draft
revised GBER contains several positive elements, including an increased focus on testing
and experimentation infrastructure and the intention to complement the Regulation with
clearer and more user-friendly guidance. At the same time, we consider that the draft does
not sufficiently address a key structural challenge: the lack of operational clarity in
distinguishing between economic and non-economic activities. This gap creates legal
uncertainty, divergent national interpretations, and risks of discouraging investment in
research, innovation and shared test and demonstration infrastructures.
2. Need for a clear and operational safe harbour for non-economic activities
The revision of the GBER should be used to operationalize the activity-based approach
already established in the case law of the Court of Justice, the Commission’s Notice on the
notion of State aid and the R&D&I Framework. In particular, a clear safe harbour for non-
economic research, development, and innovation activities should be introduced. Where
activities are carried out by research and knowledge of dissemination organizations on a
non-profit basis, with open and non-discriminatory access and wide dissemination of
results, they should, as a rule, be presumed to be non-economic. A simple project-level
self-declaration could support uniform application while keeping administrative burdens
low.
3. Testing, demonstration and technology infrastructures, including regulatory
sandboxes
The revised GBER should provide legal clarity regarding open-access testing and
demonstration facilities, including regulatory sandboxes and technology infrastructures.
These infrastructures are essential components of Europe’s innovation ecosystem and are
often operated primarily in public interest. We recommend that the GBER explicitly
recognizes that such infrastructures, when operated under transparent and non-
discriminatory access conditions, with pricing based on cost recovery and with any
economic use remaining ancillary, may be presumed to carry out predominantly non-
economic activities. This would enable full public funding where appropriate, improve
access for SMEs, and reduce the risk of unintended competition distortions.
4. Mixed projects and ancillary economic activity
For projects combining economic and non-economic activities, the GBER should clearly
state that only the economic components fall within the scope of Article 107(1) TFEU.
Accounting separation, for example at work-package level, should be considered sufficient
to avoid cross-subsidization and ensure correct aid intensities. In this context, the 20%
threshold for ancillary economic use should be explicitly confirmed as a safe harbour, not a
hard cap. Exceeding this threshold should not automatically reclassify non-economic
activities as economic but instead be addressed through accounting separation and
proportionate monitoring or claw-back mechanisms.
5. Consistency between EU funding and national co-financing
To support synergies between EU programmes and national funding, it is crucial that
activities assessed as non-economic under EU programmes retain this classification when
they receive national co-financing. The revised GBER and accompanying guidance should
explicitly address this issue and counteract risks of national over-implementation and
inconsistent interpretation.
6. Concluding remarks
The revision of the GBER represents a key opportunity to strengthen Europe’s research and
innovation capacity. The clarifications proposed above do not introduce new legal
concepts but rather operationalize existing EU law in a way that enhances legal certainty,
reduces administrative complexity and promotes more consistent application across
Member States. We encourage the Commission to reflect these elements in the final GBER
and its accompanying guidance, so that State aid rules effectively support – rather than
constrain – the development, testing and deployment of new technologies in Europe.
Mette Fjord Sørensen, CEO

Bjarke Kjehr Lind, CEO Chief Economis