State aid: EC adopts new rules facilitating public support for research, development & innovation
22 May 2014 03:34 PM
The European Commission
has adopted new rules that will facilitate the granting of aid measures by
Member States in support of research, development and innovation
(R&D&I) activities.
The European Commission has
adopted new rules that will facilitate the granting of aid measures by Member
States in support of research, development and innovation (R&D&I)
activities. The new R&D&I state aid Framework sets out the conditions
under which Member States can grant state aid to companies to carry out
R&D&I activities. Moreover, the scope of measures that no longer need
to be notified to the Commission for prior approval has been widened under
the new General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER). These new rules will
help Member States reach the targets of the Europe 2020 Strategy for smart,
sustainable and inclusive growth, while at the same time limiting distortions
in the Single Market. See alsoMEMO/14/368. They constitute a key component of the Commission's
State Aid Modernisation package (seeIP/12/458).
Commission Vice President in
charge of competition policy Joaquín Almunia
said: "Research and innovation are key for growth and the
competitiveness of our European economy. However, highly innovative
projects often carry high risks and may not be implemented due to funding gaps.
The new framework will help to overcome such market failures and foster a smart
use of public resources for research, development and innovation
activities, in complement to private funding."
To boost economic growth, the EU
aims to increase R&D spending to 3% of GDP. However, EU R&D spending is
still lagging behind major global competitors such as the US or Japan, mainly
due to lower levels of private investment. The new rules aim to ensure that
public money is used where it is needed and that state aid mobilises private
investment in projects that would otherwise not be implemented, while
preserving competition in the Single Market. They will also facilitate the
transition of knowledge and ideas to the market.
The EU's R&D&I state
aid rules are set out in two complementary texts: the new GBER (which also
covers other types of state aid – see IP/14/587) sets out the conditions under which state aid may be
granted without prior notification to the Commission. The new Framework, in
turn, sets out the criteria under which the Commission will assess
R&D&I aid measures which have to be notified by Member States because
they have a higher potential for distorting competition. Both sets of rules
will enter into force on 1 July 2014.
The new state aid rules for
R&D&I set out in the GBER and the R&D&I Framework include the
following key features:
-
Greater flexibility for
implementing R&D&I measures
Under the GBER, the threshold
amounts below which aid is exempted from notification, meaning that it does not
have to be notified to the Commission for approval, have been significantly
increased. This gives Member States more flexibility and speeds up the process
for implementing R&D&I aid. For example, Member States can now grant
aid for experimental development of up to €15 million per project and per
beneficiary without prior Commission approval, as compared to €7.5 million
under the previous rules. Moreover the scope of aid measures for R&D&I
projects that can be exempted from notification under the GBER has also been
widened. It now extends to pilot projects and prototypes, innovation clusters
and aid for process and organisational innovation.
-
Higher aid levels
permissible
In order to help industry
overcome financing gaps, the R&D&I Framework will, for individually
notified measures, allow aid up to 70% of eligible costs for large companies
and 90% for small companies doing applied research, including the costs of
prototyping and demonstration. The higher aid levels will be available if there
is a genuine financing gap and the Commission will carry out a detailed
analysis, based on the Framework's criteria, to confirm the necessity for
granting such higher rates, so as to avoid undue distortions of competition in
the Single Market.
-
Simplification and more
legal certainty
In order to simplify the
assessment of large aid amounts for projects that are clearly in the common
European interest, R&D projects that are co-financed by the EU, e.g. under
Horizon 2020 (seeMEMO/13/1085), will now be presumed to constitute necessary and
appropriate state aid. Since public funding of non-economic activities
does not constitute state aid, the new rules in the R&D&I Framework
provide clearer criteria and guidance for distinguishing between economic and
non-economic activities.
See MEMO/14/368 on the main changes introduced by the new
rules.
The text of the GBER is
available here:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/legislation/block.html#gber
The R&D&I Framework is
available here:
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state_aid/modernisation/index_en.html#rdi
Background
The current framework for R&D&I aid (see MEMO/06/441) entered into force in January 2007 and
defines criteria for assessing the compatibility of state aid for R&D&I
with the Single Market, under Articles 107(3)(b) and 107(3)(c) of the Treaty on
the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). The revision of the framework
(see MEX/11/1221, IP/13/1300), together with the revision of the GBER rules on
R&D&I aid (seeIP/12/627, MEX/13/0508, IP/13/736, IP/13/1281), is embedded in the Commission's State Aid
Modernisation initiative (see IP/12/458). In this context, the revision of R&D&I rules
seeks to support sustainable growth and contribute to the quality of public
spending by discouraging aid that does not bring real added-value and distorts
competition.
Since the previous set of
R&D&I aid rules entered into force in 2007, the Commission has
authorised more than 250 aid schemes and around 55 large individual aid
measures, the latter alone being worth about €2.5 billion. Around 80% of
the large aid projects involved key enabling technologies (KET), such as micro
and nanoelectronics, advanced materials, industrial biotechnologies and
advanced manufacturing systems. Member States have also increasingly used the
possibility to implement R&D&I aid without prior approval by the
Commission, under the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER). In total,
R&D&I state aid awarded under the previous rules amounts to an
estimated €62.4 billion.
The new rules are part of the
Commission's State Aid Modernisation initiative (see IP/12/458), which aims to foster aid measures that boost economic
growth while focusing the Commission’s scrutiny on cases with the biggest
impact on competition. As part of this package, the Commission has already
reformed its state aid procedures (see IP/13/728) and adopted new guidelines on state aid for broadband
(see IP/12/1424), regional development (see IP/13/569), cinema (see IP/13/1074), airports and airlines (see IP/14/172), risk finance (see IP/14/21), as well as energy and environment (see IP/14/400).
Contacts :
Antoine
Colombani (+32 2 297 45 13, Twitter:
@ECspokesAntoine)
Yizhou
Ren (+32 2 299 48 89)
For the
public: Europe Direct by
phone 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11 or by email
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