The TVL (Fixed Cost Compensation) scheme offers support to the Dutch business community, in maximum amounts that are dictated by the leeway offered under the EU’s Temporary Framework Regulation, the latter having been designed to help the economy throughout the EU weather the COVID-19 storm. The EU’s temporary state aid framework has recently undergone extension where it concerns its duration and scope, and the Dutch Cabinet in response has decided to increase the TVL maximum per business, per quarter. The quarterly maximum for SMEs has thus been increased from 330,000 to 550,000 euros each and that for their larger counterparts, from 400,000 to 600,000 euros each. The maximum under the VGD segment of the TVL scheme, which helps out retailers having been unable due to COVID-related closure to shift their stocks, has likewise been increased, from 200,000 to 300,000 euros each. The VGD (Stock Support Closed Retail) sub-scheme is set to expire at the end of Q1 2021.
The TVL subsidy for businesses in the agricultural cum horticultural sector has been capped at 225,000 euros each. The Cabinet is in the process of developing a separate sub-scheme for large agricultural and horticultural businesses involving the same maximums being deployed as apply within the “regular” TVL framework, viz. 550,000 euros each for SMEs and 600,000 euros each for larger-sized businesses. This sector-specific sub-scheme should be up and running by April or May next, with retroactive effect from the first of April onwards.
Arguing that the development from scratch of yet another scheme would take too much time and would moreover involve considerably stricter conditions applying, the Economic Affairs Minister, Bas van ‘t Wout, and his Junior Minister, Mona Keijzer, have decided not to entertain the request of the large-sized branch business sector for a separate subsidy sub-scheme to be launched on the strength of a different subparagraph of the temporary state aid framework.
The above changes are to be incorporated into the existing TVL programme as soon as they have been ratified, with RVO.nl, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, subsequently seeing to the supplementary payments being made where appropriate.
Dutch version: Verhoging maxima TVL