International Antitrust Law & Policy: Fordham Corporate Law 2001 - Hardcover
International Antitrust Law & Policy: Fordham Corporate Law 2001 - PDF
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Chapter 4
COMPETITION POLICY, STATE AID AND
STATE ENTERPRISES
Adinda Sinnaeve†
I. INTRODUCTION
Competition policy and State aid are often perceived as two separate, at
the most complementary, areas of the European Commission’s activity. This
might not be surprising in the light of both the situation in large parts of the
world, where competition policy is limited to antitrust and merger control,
and the development of State aid control within the EU itself. For a long time
the Commission’s State aid policy lived in the shadow of competition policy
in the narrow sense, and had no more than a loose connection with it. The
absence of parallel evolution is also reflected in the procedural framework of
both policies. While in the antitrust field basic legislation was put into place
very early,1 the State aid counterpart of Regulation 17 – Council Regulation
No. 659/19992 – was not adopted until 19993 and, for example, the first block
exemptions for State aid only came into force in the beginning of 2001.4
When looking back at the concept which the founding fathers of the EC
Treaty had of competition policy, however, it is clear that State aid control
was considered as an integral part of competition policy. The logic of the
Treaty is to control distortions of competition regardless of whether they are
Administrator, European Commission, DG Competition, Brussels. The views
expressed in this article are the author’s own and should not be attributed to the
European Commission.