The need for a better assessment of the impact of state aid
The need for a better assessment of the impact of state aid

Author(s): Paulina Kubera
Subject(s): Economy, Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Supranational / Global Economy, Business Economy / Management, International Law, Law on Economics, Public Finances, Accounting - Business Administration, EU-Legislation, Commercial Law
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego w Poznaniu
Keywords: European union (EU);public spending;state aid;EU internal market;
Summary/Abstract: European Commission assess state aid measures relying on a set of predefined criteria. If an aid measure complies with these criteria, it is deemed that the positive effects of a planned aid outweigh its negative effects on competition and trade without a sufficient evaluation of its actual impact, though the latter could actually significantly contribute to the decision-making process in order to improve the design of future public interventions and rules governing state aid. This concern has been echoed in the European Court of Auditors’s 2011 Special report: ‘Do the Commission’s procedures ensure effective management of State aid controls?’, where the Tribunal finds that ‘the Commission does not assess the ex post impact of State aid in a comprehensive way’. The paper aims to investigate this problem. It is divided into three parts that correspond to the following three lines of inquiry: (1) what is the practice of granting State aid in the EU in terms of its volume and category, (the objectives for which aid is targeted), is the overall state aid volume decreasing or not, and are there shifts in state aid priorities; (2) how is the EU state aid control conducted, what are the developments in this field stemming from the postulate on the greater reliance of economic insights; and finally (3) what problems concerning the EU state aid control still need to be addressed in order to improve its effectiveness. To this end, statistical analysis is applied based on EUROSTAT data.

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