State Aid Control in South-East Europe: Waiting for a Wake-up Call

Abstract

The South-East European (SEE) countries, having signed Stabilisation and Association Agreements with the European Union, are required to establish an operationally independent state aid monitoring authority, to harmonise their legislative framework with that of the EU, and to demonstrate a credible enforcement record. This paper analyses whether these requirements for EU accession have been achieved so far. The authors conducted a comparative cross-country analysis and tried to identify common problems and enforcement trends. As the paper elucidates, the SEE countries have largely met the EU requirements by harmonising their national state aid acts and corresponding by-laws with EU law. However, these rules are applied in a different socio-economic context and by national authorities of dubious independence from the government, which results in a modest enforcement record. As may be derived from the pre-accession experience of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the effectiveness of state aid control mechanisms is conditioned by the credibility of the country's EU perspective. And the South-East European countries have only just started their European journey.