Brussels, 25/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - According to an article in the French newspaper, Les Echos, on Thursday 25 July, it looks like the European Commission could, at the beginning of next week, approve French state aid to PSA Finance, the car manufacturing group PSA Peugeot-Citroën's bank.
This information was implicitly confirmed on Wednesday by Commissioner for Competition Joaquín Almunia, who said a final decision on the subject would be made in a matter of days. Such a decision would end of an investigation launched last May to check whether state aid rules had been complied with in the bank restructuring plan in which a public guarantee of €7 billion was to be granted, along with €85.9 million in the form of reimbursable subsidies and loans (see EUROPE 10760). In February, the Commission approved the first tranche of guarantees worth €1.2 billion enabling the bank to refinance itself on the markets (see EUROPE 10783). The decision now awaited focuses on the residual amount of aid (€5.8 billion) and the conditions required for authorising it.
The Commission will have to verify whether this aid will re-establish the company's long-term viability and whether the compensatory measures offered by the company for participating in its restructuring are proportionate to the competition distortions created by the subsidies granted. (FG/transl.fl)