Brussels, 13/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - Addressing the Committee of the Regions plenary last week, European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said she was pragmatic and wanted results. Philosphical debate didn't interest her, she explained, concerning modernising the state aid scheme and the regional dimension.
The Commissioner outlined some aspects of the Commission's action plan on the review of regional state aid. An initial working document will be published shortly. Fairness and effectiveness are at the heart of the Commission's concerns, explained Kroes, noting that the guidelines set by the Gothenburg and Barcelona European Councils had to be respected, namely cutting the total amount of aid and targetting the aid better. The Commissioner explained that the framework also had to be effective - procedures have to as simple and predictable as possible. She said she would like to speed up the decision-making process and cut red tape. Kroes described regional aid as an integral part of the state aid action plan. Regarding fairness, she said state aid had to be used to develop the areas of the economy that most require help and one had to be very clear about the resources to be used to this end, restricting aid that interferes with competition. Regional aid must be better targetted on the regions most in need.
In response to questions from members of the Committee of the Regions, particularly a question from Michel Delebarre (France, PES) about the definition of services of general economic interest, the Dutch Commissioner regretted that the country she knows the best and the country Delebarre knows the best had not provided an opportunity to define services of general interest (alluding to the rejection of the Constitution by the French and Dutch electorates), but added that the Commission was examining the issue and there had to be a framework to define all public services. Reacting to fears expressed by some CoR members that regional aid simply gave companies a reason to relocate jobs from one region to another without actually creating jobs, Kroes said that state aid were not the key argument when companies were deciding on their location, and a fluid and flexible labour market was far more decisive.
Immediately after the Commissioner's address, the Committee of the Regions unanimously endorsed an opinion on the review of the regional state aid guidelines, presented by Spanish Socialist Vicente Alberto Alvarez Areces, President of the Principality of the Asturias. He stressed that the Commission should focus on the need for transition measures to avoid the burden of the enlargement of Europe falling on a handful of regions and only hitting a small percentage of the population in areas where regional aid has not been high in recent years.