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EU: State aid: latest Scoreboard shows Member States giving more aid for environmental protection – frequently asked questions

/noticias.info/ What is the State Aid Scoreboard?

The Scoreboard is the Commission’s benchmarking instrument for state aid, measuring progress towards the European Council's calls for "less and better targeted aid". In March 2000, the European Council called on the Commission, the Council and Member States to "further their efforts to ... reduce the general level of state aid, shifting the emphasis from supporting individual companies or sectors towards tackling horizontal objectives of Community interest, such as employment, regional development, environment and training or research". The call for less and better targeted aid has been repeated at successive European Councils.

The Scoreboard is sent to the European Parliament and the Council and is published in accordance with Article 6(2) of Commission Regulation 794/2004 ("Implementing Regulation in the field of State aid").

The Scoreboard was launched by the Commission in July 2001 to provide a transparent and publicly accessible source of information on the overall state aid situation in the EU Member States and on the Commission's state aid control activities. It provides user-friendly and transparent information on Commission decisions, legislative acts, Court cases and other Community documents.

When is it published?

The Scoreboard is published twice a year, inthe Spring and inthe Autumn. Since 2005, the Autumn update (November-December) includes state aid expenditure figures for the previous calendar year, while the spring update (April-May) provides more in-depth analysis of a particular state aid theme. Previous themes have included unlawful aid, aid for rescue and restructuring, public service broadcasting and enlargement.

Where is it available?

The Scoreboard (latest update as well as all previous versions) is available on the Europa website. It is published in the Commission's three working languages: English, French and German.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/studies_reports/studies_reports.html

In addition to the main report, there is a wide array of detailed statistical tables and key indicators for all Member States.

What is in the Scoreboard?

The Scoreboard covers state aid as defined under Article 87(1) EC Treaty that has been granted by the EU Member States and has been the subject of a final Commission decision. General measures that do not favour certain enterprises or sectors and public subsidies that do not affect trade or distort competition are not dealt with in the Scoreboard as they are not subject to the Commission’s investigative powers under the state aid rules. A set of methodological notes on the website addresses these and other questions.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/competition/state_aid/studies_reports/conceptual_remarks.html

What is the state aid situation in the new Member States, Bulgaria and Romania?

The Spring 2008 scoreboard includes for the first time comparable data for 2006 for the two new Member States, Bulgaria and Romania. They will be fully integrated into the autumn 2008 Scoreboard.

In 2006, total state aid amounted to €31 million for Bulgaria and €545 million for Romania. By comparison, the EU-27 total was €49 billion. In relative terms, total aid represented 0.12% of the Bulgarian GDP which was significantly lower than the EU-12 average (0.51 %) and the EU-27 average (0.42 %). In Romania, the share of aid to GDP was significantly higher, representing 0.56% of GDP. When aid is expressed in per capita terms, a different picture emerges with regard to the relative position of Romania: 51 purchasing power standards (PPS) per person – corresponds to around half of the EU average (99 PPS per person) while Bulgaria's 11 PPS per person was the lowest in the EU. PPS are used to take account of differences in price levels between countries.

Following relatively high awards of aid for restructuring and privatisation earlier in the decade, the trend in both countries for the period immediately prior to accession is clearly downward. As to the objective of better targeted aid, Bulgaria granted 79% of total aid in 2006 for horizontal objectives of common interest while Romania awarded only 19% (EU average is 84 %).

What is the distinction between aid measures with a direct and with an indirect benefit for the environment?

State aid for environmental protection encompasses a wide range of objectives, including support measures for renewable energy, energy-saving, waste management, etc. For these types of measures, aid granted by Member States is aimed at providing a direct benefit to the environment. State aid expenditure data for such cases can therefore be taken as a proxy measure for the intended environmental benefit, regardless of the form in which the aid may be awarded (grant, tax exemption, guarantee, etc.). This represented approximately 47% of total environmental aid expenditure in 2006 (around €6.7 billion).

A second category of state aid measures assessed under the environmental aid guidelines are reductions or exemptions from environmental taxes. Here, the environmental objective of the measure is pursued by the tax itself. Any reduction or exemption from environmental taxes, i.e., the part of the measure constituting aid, has an indirect environmental objective by facilitating the introduction or modification of such taxes (going beyond the minima imposed by European Directives for example). Expenditure data currently available for this category of aid schemes indicate the amount of tax revenue foregone and can therefore not serve as a proxy measure for the environmental benefit the taxes themselves have brought. In 2006, some 53% of total expenditure (around €7.5 billion) fell under this category.

Why are tax exemptions from environmental taxes permitted under the state aid rules?

Tax exemptions from environmental taxes do not themselves aim at reaching higher environmental standards. However, such exemptions are only allowed where the tax from which the exemption is granted is intended to make a significant contribution to protecting the environment and where the exemption does not undermine the objectives pursued. For this reason, the new State Aid Guidelines for Environmental Protection (see IP/08/80 and MEMO/08/31) require that when companies do not pay at least the EU minimum tax or when the tax is not subject to Community-wide harmonisation, long term derogations from environmental taxes are possible only when Member States can demonstrate that they are necessary and proportionate. notas_de_prensa_archivo