Brussels, 29/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 29 April, the European Commission adopted two communications to simplify state aid procedures. The first is a Best Practice Code for carrying out procedures in controlling state aid and the second involves simplified procedures for certain kinds of state aid. Both texts propose that Member States increase their contacts prior to notification of aid measures, so as to eliminate potential difficulties early in the process.
The Best Practices Code details how state aids procedures should be carried out in practice, in particular as regards their duration, transparency and predictability. It will apply to all cases not covered by the General Block Exemption Regulation and which are not subject to the Notice on the Simplified Procedure.
The Simplified Procedure aims at improving the Commission's treatment of straightforward cases, like those clearly in line with existing horizontal instruments or established Commission decision-making practice. The Commission wants to ensure that clearly compatible aid gets approved within one month when Member States provide a complete notification. To this effect, the communication also includes an illustrative list of aid measures, including certain aids for SMEs, environmental aid, innovation aid and rescue and restructuring aid, which are in principle suitable for simplified treatment. Neither of these initiatives is intended to apply to the measures notified by Member States in the context of the current financial and economic crisis, for which specific ad hoc internal procedures have been established in order to allow the Commission to treat notified measures with extreme urgency. (L.C./trans/rh)