Brussels, 08/01/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 8 January, the European Commission published an assessment report of the first five years of the block exemption regulations for State aid. The report concludes that experience has been largely positive, allowing the adoption of over 1600 State aid measures, without prior notice. The Commissioner with responsibility for competition matters, Neelie Kroes, explained that lightening the bureaucratic burden should "enable the Commission to focus its efforts on tackling the most distortive types of aid".
Since 2001, the Commission has adopted a series of block exemption regulations for aid granted to SMEs, to R&D for SMEs, employment and training, and for aid to the fisheries and agriculture sectors. These Commission regulations were adopted in application of regulation (EC) 994/98 of the Council, which also obliges the Commission to present a report to the European Parliament and to the Council every five years. Further to the positive conclusions of the most recent one, and in line with the action plan in the field of State aid (see EUROPE 9032), the Commission intends to simplify existing block exemption regulations, to bring them together under a single regulation and to extend the scope of application in order to include, in particular, certain types of environmental assistance. A new block exemption regulation for regional investment aid and new rules concerning aid for the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products also entered into force on 1 January 2007.
The report can be consulted in full at:
http: //ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/studies_reports/studies_reports.html (cd)