The European Commission to prolong several EU state aid rules including Guidelines for 2 years until end of 2022

The European Commission has announced on 7 January 2019 that it intends to prolong the current EU state aid rules for two years, until end of 2022. Those rules, which were part of the reform on State Aid Modernisation (SAM), were supposed to expire end of 2020. Other state aid rules have no fixed expiry date.

The rules part of the SAM-reform are rules which are typically updated on a regular basis subject to a revision process which, in the present case, is starting this Spring. The whole revision process will advance in several steps.

First, the following State aid rules will be prolonged until 2022:

• General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER)
• De minimis Regulation
• Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection and energy (EEAG)
• Guidelines on regional State aid
• Guidelines on State aid to promote risk Finance Investments
• Guidelines on State aid for rescuing and restructuring
• Communication on important Projects of common European interest (IPCEI).

For the energy sector, this means that the newly adopted Renewable Energy Directive (EU) 2018/2001 of 11 December 2018 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources will start applying while the current GBER and the EEAG (adopted in 2014) will still be under review. The new provisions of the Renewable Energy Directive will necessarily need to be reflected in the new guidelines.

When it comes to the Guidelines on state aid measures in the context of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), two consultations have already been published with the objective of reviewing the guidelines before they were planned to end (so, no prolongation) and so to coincide with the implementation of the revised EU ETS Directive.

Second, the Commission is starting a review process of the above-mentionned rules together with the other State aid rules of the SAM-reform (including other guidelines), in accordance with the Commission's Better Regulation Guidelines. This review process is called "fitness check", and usually includes: internal analyses done by the Commission services, public consultations, workshops and studies by external consultants. The review process results in a Commissionn Staff Working Document laying down the proposals for change or prolongation.

It has to be noted that, following the adoption of the SAM-reform, the notification threshold for state aid measures have been raised. This means that more than 97% of all State aid measures adoption by the Member States are implemented without the prior approval by the Commission (figure given by the Commission).

Reference:

State aid: Commission to prolong EU State aid rules and launch evaluation, Press release, European Commission, IP/19/182, 7 January 2019.