Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - This Thursday, the European Commission unveiled its new scoreboard on State aid. With the register of State aid presented in the spring (see EUROPE of 23 March, p.10), the scoreboard is the second of the two new instruments established by the Commission in the field of State aid policy in the concern for transparency. While the register is an instrument for information searches on State aid, the scoreboard presents the more detailed information aimed at adding to that already briefly released in the register and in the Commission's annual reports on aid.
The scoreboard includes five parts: - general table: indicates the spending dedicated to State aid in the EU and in each Member States as a percentage of GDP. These aids are then broken down according to the main aims intended (support for agriculture and fishing, aid to transport, ship building, steel production, support to the regions lagging behind in development, etc.); - the forum for Member States: contains fundamental ideas for the lunching of a forum of Member States, which will provide indications on their policy in terms of State aid and the level of transparency they have achieved and will act as a catalyst for debates between the Member States; - the measurement of respect for the rules governing aids: provides, as its name indicates, an overview of the results obtained by the Member States on the level of respect for rules of procedure in order to find the problems and thus indicate what improvements would be necessary. This part also contained data on the recuperation of aids granted illegally; - current Member States policy: in the light of the amounts of aid dedicated by the Member States to various aims and the determined sectors. This information permits to determine the areas in which an action by the Commission could be necessary or desirable. The Member States would thus be encouraged to examine certain trends and practices in terms of spending and to appreciate the impact on the functioning of the internal market; - aids in the internal market: seeks to launch a debate on the relationship between the situation in terms of State aid as present in the Member States after the control carried out by the Commission, the functioning of the internal market and the success of the economic reform process.
The scoreboard will be progressively developed in relation to the needs of its various categories of users and will provide an account, over time, of the political changes and trends in the spending on State aid. Thus it will provide added value to other documents already published by the Commission in terms of economic policy and enterprise policy. It may be found on the Internet from the home page of DG Competition: http: //europa.eu.int/comm/competition.