Brussels, 10/06/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has authorised EUR 22 million in regional investment aid that Spain is planning to give the Renault plant in Valladolid to increase production capacity by 1200 diesel and petrol engines a day. The investigation was launched in November 2001 to discover whether, as the Spanish government claimed, Bursa in Turkey would have been a viable alternative to Valladolid (see EUROPE of 15 November 2001, p.14) since the EU state aid rules for the car industry state that the aid recipient must clearly prove that it has an economically viable alternative location for the programme. In terms of the required "necessity" of the aid, the Commission studied the geographical mobility of the project and considered that Renault's Bursa plant in Turkey could have hosted the project. To assess the "proportionality" of the aid, a cost-benefit analysis was carried out, comparing it with a site within the EEA and CEECs, namely the site of Mioveni in Romania, where Renault owns the Dacia plant, selected because of its similarities with Bursa in terms of location and costs. The analysis compared the costs an investor would bear to carry out the project in the chosen location with the costs for an identical project in an alternative location and showed that the extra costs for locating production in Valladolid rather than Mioveni are higher than the proposed aid. The Commission therefore concluded that EU state aid rules had been respected and authorized the aid.