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EU To Extend Broad State Aid Rules For COVID Hit Companies

By  |  September 30, 2021

The European Commission on Thursday, September 30, proposed extending looser State aid rules for virus-hit companies for six months to June 2022 in a bid to slowly wean them off the billions of euros provided by governments across the European Union.

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    The EU executive, tasked with ensuring a level playing field in the 27-country bloc, also proposed two new measures to encourage investment support and solvency support for a limited time to help Europe rebound from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The so-called Temporary Framework, adopted in March last year and due to expire at the end of this year, has allowed EU countries to pump in more than €3 trillion to thousands of companies across the bloc.

    “We need to be aware of disparities across member states and the need to avoid cliff-edge effects when withdrawing public support,” Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.

    “We are therefore proposing a progressive phase-out of crisis support measures to enable member states and industry to adjust, accompanied by measures to kick-start and crowd-in private investment in the recovery phase,” she said.

    While the proposed investment support measures are aimed at a wide group of beneficiaries and should be limited in size, the solvency support measure is targeted at small- and medium-sized companies which typically rely on bank loan financing.