Wasteful spending of public funds, leading to the creation of “ghost airports”, is often described as a regulatory failure and a major deficiency in European State aid control. It is pointed out that decisions to build or upgrade an airport are often ill-conceived, poorly implemented, and without economic justification. This raises the question whether European law, namely its State aid control system, contains inherent flaws or whether the European Commission’s decision-making process can be improved by increasing reliance on objective economic reasoning under the existing legal framework. This article provides an analysis of the decision-making problems leading to failed aid efforts; of the role of the economic approach in State aids; and of the standard of economic assessment required in State aid cases. The article concludes with de lege ferenda postulates.
The aim of this work was to present a method of tissue culture research by measuring the impedance of cells cultured in the presence of nichrome. For this purpose, the Electric Cell-substrate Impedance Sensing system was used with a prototype substrate containing comb capacitors made of nichrome. Magnetron sputtering, photolithography and etching processes were used to produce the thin-film electrodes. In the experimental part, cells of mouse fibroblast cell line L929 were cultured according to the instruction manual in complete medium, under controlled growth conditions. Inoculation of arrays was carried out by 300 microliters per well of cell suspension at ~1.2×105 cells/ml. The results of the monitoring cells behavior in tissue culture indicate good cell viability and proliferative potential.