Brussels, 09/01/2013 (Agence Europe) - On 7 January 2013, the French government officially informed the European Commission of the rescue plan for the PSA Finance bank (part of the Peugeot-Citroën group), reports French economic newspaper Les Echos, implicitly admitting that the €7 billion guarantee granted by the French state to help the bank refinance itself on the markets is state aid under EU rules. The Commission will now have to examine the plan in detail and reply within two months. In order to grant approval, it is expected to demand further concessions from the car manufacturer in addition to those in the rescue plan, such as the sale of assets and possibly a more stringent redundancy plan (several thousand jobs are already planned to go in France), according to Les Echos. However, the Commission has not yet informed the company about any extra demands and the French economy minister, Pierre Moscovici, said on 9 January at a press conference that the PSA Peugeot Citroën restructuring plan will not need to be changed, even if the Commission says that the guarantee to PSA Finance amounts to state aid. Moscovici said that it wasn't the entire guarantee that was state aid and the talks with the Commission were proceeding extremely well.
Notification of the aid to PSA Finance is a sea-change in the attitude of PSA and the French authorities, which previously said that the guaranteed didn't need to be notified because it was paid at market value and was therefore not state aid. On the contrary, the French state says that it expects to make a substantial amount of money from the guarantee without having to pay out a single euro. At the end of December, EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said that the guarantee was, indeed, state aid and would have to be notified to the Commission for its agreement. (FG/transl.fl)