Public Consultation on amendment of the State Aid reporting

Obligations

In May 2011, the European Commission launched a public consultationon its website, inviting the national and regional authorities, dealing withthe annual reporting to the Commission on State aid granted, to expresstheir views on the Commission’s proposal to amend the reporting obliga-tions imposed on Member States in the State aid field.The Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs is responsible for collect-ing data from public authorities granting state aid, in context with the an-nual reporting exercise. In addition, the Ministry has informed these pub-lic authorities of their opportunity to contribute to the public consultation.As feedback to the public consultation, the Ministry of Economic andBusiness Affairs therefore states the following.

General remarks

The overall object of amending the reporting obligations is to keepCommission competence to conduct strict state aid control. Furthermore,to simplify the administrative burden, by removing the additional report-ing obligations from the specific State aid guidelines/frameworks and toimprove data collection in the context of the annual reporting exercise, byimplementing the State Aid Interactive Reporting Tool in all memberstates.The Danish Government supports the Commissions overall object of theamendment of the State aid reporting obligations. The Danish Govern-ment proposes simultaneously, that the Commission considers the possi-bility of creating a single reporting system for all type of reports of stateaid, including the state aid reports to WTO and OECD.Yours sincerelyPreben Sandberg PettersonHead of State Aid Division