Brussels, 03/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - On 2 July, the European Parliament adopted a report by Herbert Dorfmann (EPP, Italy) by 598 votes to 19, with 93 abstentions. The report is on changes to the rules to enable the Commission to view certain types of state aid as compatible with the internal market and thus not requiring notification (aid for small businesses, research, innovation, environmental protection and the like, under EU Regulation 994/98 and rail and road passenger transport under Regulation 1370/2007).
In amendments it tabled and adopted, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to focus its investigations on cases having a notable impact on the single market and to exempt certain categories from the aid notification requirements without exempting too many services from the state aid controls. The EP says that the notification exemptions should apply to aid for innovation, particularly social innovation. It says that the regulation exempting certain categories of amateur sport should be clarified and make clear whether the state aid is viewed as being for the sports associations for sport as such or for infrastructure projects. For the aid for road, rail and inland water transport, the reference in the Commission's draft of the scrapping of Article 9 of Regulation 1370/2007 (which makes it possible to exempt from the prior notification requirement and from the tariff requirements compensation for public passenger transport) has itself been scrapped. The reference to the option of defining the maximum amount of state aid has been scrapped, even if the aid is not viewed as state aid. The most important amendment is a challenge by the EP of the legal basis of Regulation 994/98 (Art.109 of the EU treaty) which only gave the EP consultation rights rather than the normal legislative procedure. The EP demands that this democratic deficit be remedied through an amendment to Article 109. In this connection, the EP also asks that it be given sight of the annual reports from member states to the Commission on application of the exemptions by category, along with a biennial report from the Commission outlining the costs and benefits of the exemptions by category and assessing how the regulation contributes to the flagship initiatives of the EUROPE 2020 strategy and the Horizon 2020 innovation policy. (FG/transl.fl)