Hello, welcome to another MLEX podcast. Our website is Mlexmarketinsight.com, and you can click on the Insight Center for the best writing by our team of reporters around the world.

I'm James Panicki from Emlex's Asia-Pacific team. Great to have your company today.

And as our readers would know, COVID-19 has prompted regulatory upheaval around the world,

particularly when it comes to the rules applying to state aid. Now, there are competition aspects to this story as well.

Governments choosing to prop up some companies hit by the pandemic but not others

will inevitably lead to complaints on the part of those who aren't benefiting from the bailouts.

Then there are countries choosing to steer clear of state intervention altogether,

only to then be exposed to the accusation

that they are in fact allowing anti-competitive monopolies to take hold, as the survival of the

fittest leads to the fittest surviving and others obviously falling by the wayside.

And we'll get to a good example of that in the context of Australian aviation in just a moment.

But in the European Union, the issue of state aid is a difficult one at the best of times.

Michael Acton is an M-lex correspondent in Brussels, although he's sitting out the pandemic in Amsterdam at the moment.

Mike, great speaking to you.

A pleasure to be here.

Now, the EU has moved quickly to relax its rules on state aid.

Why has that been necessary?

Well, normally the rules on state aid are designed to stop countries from providing unfair

subsidies to their businesses.

It enforces what's called the level playing field across Europe,

so no individual government can give its own businesses some sort of advantage over others.

Now we're in this unprecedented situation where pretty much across the whole of Europe,

...