"The development of the state aid regime"

Thomas, Kenneth P. (1997) "The development of the state aid regime". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

In this chapter, I turn to a historical accounting of the development of Commission procedures and powers, and to the changing background conditions in which state aid controls existed. I focus on those developments which bear most strongly on the Commission’s ability to exercise effective control. The exposition will be partly chronological and partly thematic. First, I will examine the first major application of state aid rules, export aid for intra-Community trade. Second, I will turn to early Commission efforts in the area of regional aid, in which the system of differentiated aid maxima for different regions of the Community were created and expanded. Third, I will consider the impact that the addition of new, poorer member states has had on state aid policy. Fourth, I consider Commission efforts in two important sectors, textiles and automobiles. Fifth, I analyze the introduction and development of the most important horizontal framework, that for research and development. Sixth, the focus shifts to the question of efforts to evade legal history of state aid rules and their application. In particular, this will focus on Commission initiatives such as the Transparency Directive and the rules on cumulation of aids, and especially on the use of repayment orders beginning in the mid-1980s. Seventh, I consider the crucial cases defining the powers of the Commission (in particular, Philip Morris) and the rights of third parties. Finally, I analyze in detail the political underpinnings of reinforced state aid control beginning in the mid-1980s.

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