Brussels, 12/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - The president of the Committee of the Regions (CoR), Peter Straub, welcomes the adoption by the Commission, on 6 September, of the new guidelines on financing regional airports (EUROPE 9021). The guidelines are the Commission's recognition of the impact of the work conducted by the Committee of the Regions in its initial outlook report of 2 July 2003 and the subsequent opinion of July 2005, he says in a press release. The new guidelines take up two of the recommendations made by the Committee of the Regions, namely: - clarification of the “market economy investor principle”, which consists in application of the same rules of competition when the public administration that grants subsidies behaves like a private investor taking profitability requirements into account; - and the application of the de minimis principle to the small airports, exempting them from having to notify the Commission of State aid.
Committee Rapporteur Gordon Keymer (EPP, UK) was also pleased with the explicit recognition of the role of regional airports in a region's economic development, the measures intended to help disadvantaged or outlying regions, and equal treatment between public and private airports. He nonetheless regrets that the Commission has decided to maintain its ban on granting aid to the opening of a new route when there is already a similar line from another airport located in the same “economic attraction zone”. He would also like the duration of aid to be “more flexible”, instead of being limited to 3 or 5 years with a ceiling of 50% of the amount of eligible costs.