Europese Commissie publiceert overzicht van staatssteun aan landbouw in de 25 lidstaten (en)

Today, the European Commission agreed to publish the list of existing State aid measures in the new Member States in the Official Journal of the European Union and to put the full texts of these measures on the Commission website. In total 441 existing aid schemes have been communicated by the new Member States.

According to the Treaty of Accession, the new Member States could till 31 August 2004 communicate to the Commission State aid measures which they wished to be regarded as existing aid till 1 May 2007. The European Commission is required to publish a list of these aids.

The Commission decided today that a list of titles of existing State aid measures in the official language of the submitting country will be put into the Official Journal of the European Union `C’ series. The full texts of the measures, as communicated, will subsequently be made available on the following internet website of the European Commission: http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/stateaid/index_en.htm. That way, farmers and companies in the New Member States can easily verify whether state aid received by them is in fact covered by an existing aid scheme covered by the Treaty of Accession, and is therefore legal.

The number of existing aid schemes communicated per country varied significantly: 19 from Malta, 23 from Estonia, 24 from Slovenia, 30 from Lithuania, 32 from Slovakia, 33 from Latvia, 46 from Poland, 57 from the Czech Republic, 69 from Cyprus and 108 from Hungary.

The publication does not constitute an official position of the Commission as to whether these measures fulfil all the necessary conditions for existing aid.