Brussels, 20/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 20 March, the European Commission gave the go-ahead to a Belgian temporary aid scheme allowing subsidised state guarantees to boost the real economy. It also authorised a temporary Latvian aid scheme to grant aid to businesses of up to €500,000.
The Belgian scheme is for companies in Flanders encountering financing difficulties as a result of the credit squeeze in the current economic crisis. The scheme, put in place by the Flemish Ministry of Economic Affairs, provides aid in the form of subsidised guarantees for investment and working capital loans concluded by 31 December 2010. Under the Latvian scheme, designed to help businesses to deal with the current economic crisis, aid of up to €500,000 per firm may be granted in 2009 and 2010 to businesses facing funding problems because of the current credit squeeze. The aid will be in the form of public guarantees. The Commission decided that both schemes met the conditions of the Commission's Temporary Framework for state aid measures to support access to finance in the current financial and economic crisis, as amended on 25 February 2009, because they are appropriate to remedy serious disturbances in the Belgian and Latvian economies, are limited in time, respect the relevant thresholds and apply only to companies that were not in difficulty on 1 July 2008. (O.L./transl.rt)