21 State aid
| (25591)
8922/04
COM(04) 256
| Commission Report: State Aid Scoreboard — Spring 2004 update
|
| Legal base | — |
| Document originated | 20 April 2004
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| Deposited in Parliament | 30 April 2004
|
| Department | Trade and Industry
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 20 May 2004
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| Previous Committee Report | None; but see (25030) 14584/03: HC 42-xix (2003-04), para 7 (5 May 2004)
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| To be discussed in Council | Not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Cleared, but relevant to the debate recommended on the Commission Communication on industrial policy
|
Background
21.1 The Commission reports twice-yearly on state aid and state
aid issues. The last report ("scoreboard") gave an
overview of the state aid situation in the then fifteen Member
States and examined the underlying trends based on the latest
available data. It considered actions undertaken by both the
Commission and the Member States to follow up the Conclusions
of the Stockholm and Barcelona European Councils on state aid,
one of the most distortive types of state aid, that is, rescue
and restructuring of firms in difficulty and recent developments
in the Commission's state aid reform programme.[46]
The document
21.2 This scoreboard is the Spring update and again provides an
overview of the state aid situation in the fifteen Member States
and examines the underlying trends. It is divided into three
parts which look at:
- the extent to which Member States are reducing their state
aid relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP);
- Member States' relative success in redirecting
aid from specific sectors to horizontal objectives, including
a special focus on state aid for employment creation and promotion
of training in order to fulfil the Lisbon Strategy; and
- state aid control procedures, recovery, ongoing
work to modernise state aid control and preparing for enlargement.
21.3 This final section contains only a brief summary
of the performance of Accession States. The Commission has agreed
to provide detailed data on each new Member State in the Autumn
2004 edition of the scoreboard.
21.4 The report notes that the overall level of state
aid continues to fall — from €67.1 billion in 1997
to €48.8 billion in 2002 (figures exclude aid to the railways
sector[47]) and that
aid is falling as a percentage of GDP in the majority of Member
States. The Commission reports that, although sectoral distribution
of aid still varies widely among Member States, aid continues
to be redirected from sectoral to horizontal objectives.
21.5 The UK is shown as one of the lowest granters
of aid. In 2002 total UK state aid (less the railways sector)
was €3.9 billion — a percentage of GDP of 0.25% (compared
to the EU's 0.56%).
The Government's view
21.6 The Minister of State for Industry and the Regions
and Deputy Minister for Women and Equality, Department of Trade
and Industry (Jacqui Smith) says:
"There are no direct policy implications from
this document, which is intended to increase transparency and
to emphasise the need for Member States to continue their efforts
in reducing the overall level of State aid as a percentage of
GDP and to redirect aid towards horizontal objectives of common
interest including economic and social cohesion and target it
to identified market failures. The European Commission is continuing
to review its State aid guidelines and to develop and modernise
procedures in order to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness
of State aid schemes."
Conclusion
21.7 We report this document, like previous scoreboards,
because it is a useful summary of the situation on state aid in
the European Union. We clear the document.
21.8 We have said of previous scoreboards that
they would be relevant to any debate on state aid or related matters.
On this occasion we draw attention to the document's relevance
to a particular debate — that on the Commission's Communication
on industrial policy,[48]
in European Standing Committee C, for which we have also noted
the relevance of the Commission Communication on competition policy.[49]
21.9 We also note that our comments on the relevance
of previous state aid scoreboards to debates on state aids are
rendered redundant by our decision on the present document.
46 S ee headnote. Back
47
Because of Commission and European Court of Justice decisions,
expanded on in the document, about compensation for the provision
of services of general economic interest aid to the railways sector
this aid, although reported in the scoreboard, is now excluded
from the overall totals. Back
48
(25580) 8875/04: see HC 42-xx (2003-04), para 2 (18 May 2004). Back
49
(25592) 8923/04: see HC 42-xxi (2003-04), para 16 (26 May 2004). Back
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