The European Competition Law Annual 1999 is fourth in a series of volumes including the materials of the annual Workshops on EU Competition Law and Policy held at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University in Florence. The present volume contains the contributions and commentaries of a group of senior EU policy-makers,renowned academics and international legal experts on the subject of State Aid control - a unique and complex feature of EU competition policy, usually little explored and understood. The contributors concentrated on the aspects of EU State Aid policy that were most contentions and challenging at the time of the fourth edition of the EUI Competition Workshop (June 1999), as following: a) the economic justifications for and effects of State Aids, b) specific problems arising in the control of State Aids in the banking sector, and c) the possibilities for a more decentralised control of State Aids in the EU.