Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-26-Speech-3-220"
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"en.20060426.17.3-220"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, allow me to start by expressing my support for the Commission’s maxim which you back, namely less, but better, state aid. Whilst I have nothing but praise for the Commission, I fear that I have to start with one tiny point of criticism.
After all, it is deplorable, in my view, that the Commission, one week before we in this House vote on our position and our recommendations, is already presenting proposals, albeit at draft stage. In my opinion, if we consider each other to be allies in the fight for a stronger economy, we must also cooperate and respect each other accordingly. I therefore take it as read that even if we table proposals at this stage, they will simply be taken into consideration.
The central message of the report, which it is to be hoped we will adopt tomorrow, is that state aid should remain an exception. It is an instrument to correct imbalances where the market does not produce the required results. State aid is not a regular policy instrument by means of which the government can create innovation, as it were, and it should certainly not be used to compensate for our failure to implement structural reforms. All studies are united in their conclusion that state aid is not the decisive factor in business decisions, or in competition for that matter.
It is far more important to create favourable conditions for innovation, experimenting, taking risks and, above all, investing. Indeed, the investors from the market will readily come to us if there is something to be gained and if barriers are removed. That means that we need to work on a sound patent regime, fair competition and free trade in the internal market, and in this connection it is regrettable – I should like to say this once again – that we failed to actually open up the market for services. We must work on immigration policy in a bid to help Europe hold onto the best forces and attract talent from outside. We must work on a good range of financial services, well-qualified work force, and suchlike.
It is not, after all, a matter of doubt that state aid can distort the market to such an extent that it can, in fact, hinder developments in the area of innovation, and so the proposed balancing test in your document strikes me as a fine tool, and the emphasis on assessing results of past aid is in line with Parliament’s position, which has also been adopted in Mr Hökmark’s report.
I am actually quite interested to hear where the Commission stands on the allocation of state aid in cases where there is a clear need for structural reforms, but where Member Sates simply do not succeed in this. I would, at this point, draw a parallel with an initiative which strikes me as rather absurd, namely the globalisation fund. If we fail to make the European Union competitive, we should not resort to makeshift measures. Moreover, an interesting example in this context is the fact that today, the government of one of the big Member States announced a new injection of EUR 600 million for innovation – which is very welcome in itself – but that on this very same day, the OECD issued a rather critical report of the results of the previous aid programme of that selfsame big Member State. The report certainly makes for very interesting reading.
I am delighted that in the Commission’s proposals, as in Parliament’s forthcoming recommendations, reference is also made to non-technological innovation, because that is without a doubt a crucial development in our services economy. As far as the practical fleshing out and criteria are concerned, though, the rules seem to be very much based on innovation in the technological sectors, and I would therefore insist on the rules being usable for non-technological innovation too.
When we met yesterday, I expressed my concern about what is known as the matching clause. I double-checked, and the text really does state that the percentage of permitted aid can be increased if a competitor from a non-EU country receives more subsidy. I do not think that that should be automatically the case, because if there is a matching clause for state aid, then I would also like to see this introduced for all those other areas of policy that I have just mentioned and that are far more important as factors in competition.
Large enterprises are another potential subject for discussion, and, although I see that there are all kinds of precautionary measures to prevent us from subsidising individual large enterprises, I can still see one small cause for concern. I noticed in the proposals that large enterprises are entitled to a top-up, a bonus of 15% of aid intensity if two or more of them join forces across borders. Could this mean – and this is my final point – that we will be subsidising multinationals? That surely cannot be the intention, but, as I have already used up my time, I will have to leave it there."@en1
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