[nokicky]

The thinking goes: A business should have enough cash to weather a storm. If you've paid out cash you have more than enough to weather a storm (and therefore don't need money). If you need money and have paid out dividends than you shouldn't have, you didn't have enough cash reserve.

[rsync]

No, that's not the thinking at all.

As your sibling points out:

"The article does a bad job at explaining it, but companies that take aid cannot pay dividends or buy back stock until they return the aid."

So it has nothing to do with historical dividend payments - you just can't pay dividends while receiving the state aid.