Easing state aid rules to help European industry compete around the world is a “dangerous” approach, Mario Monti has warned.
“It is important that the rules come back,” even with minor changes, the former Italian prime minister and EU antitrust chief told Politico in an interview. He said of the EU’s massive state aid binge, “The longer the addiction phase is allowed to go on, the more difficult it will be to desensitize its subject.”
The European Commission eased state aid rules during the pandemic to allow governments to help companies hit by a sudden drop in business activity. It eased rules again last year to help cover higher energy costs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It is now offering another relaxation to match the United States’ Multibillion Inflation Reduction Act to promote green industry.
Monty said it might be time to draw a line in the sand.
“There is no point in keeping a single market free from anti-competitive distortions by firms – such as cartels, abuse of dominant positions, anti-competitive mergers – if countries are to keep that single market free,” said Monti, who acts as an internal marketer. can distort.” Commissioner.
Monti said, “There is some sort of clear imperative, spreading across Europe but mostly starting in France, according to which we must respond tit for tat to the American IRA.” He said it fails to take into account the billions of euros the EU has spent with its post-pandemic next generation plan.
“It is futile for us to chase each other on both sides of the Atlantic, we all know that someday it will be necessary to move towards more coordinated state aid control,” he said, citing some ideas on “transatlantic control” on the state concerned. Invoking help.”
Monti is also concerned that the current Commission is not doing enough to protect the single market.
“Member States cannot often think of large intensive initiatives to give the Commission more effective powers to remove the barriers that stand in the way of completing the single market,” he added. “Every single market commissioner did that in the past.”
“It doesn’t look like it attracted the attention of the current internal market commissioner,” Thierry Breton, or that he would “focus more on removing state aid controls before proposing, which would be like shooting himself in the foot,” Monti said.
Monti said that the experience of the past three years “allowed us all to conduct a kind of laboratory experiment on what Europe would look like without state aid controls.”
Italy, traditionally a subsidy-enthusiast, now warning Against loose state aid rules that could undermine the single market – a concern shared by smaller EU countries such as the Nordics belgium As well as Soft Commissioner of the European Union.
“Countries that used to complain about state aid rules are now complaining that those rules are not enforced,” he said.