Modernising State Aid through better evaluations
The continuing eurocrisis puts fostering growth ever higher on the European policy agenda, simultaneously with restraining public financing. The European Commission launched last May a Communication on State Aid Modernisation (SAM) announcing as one of its objectives for state aid control to support sustainable growth and to contribute to improving the quality of public spending by discouraging aid that does not bring real value added. Setting up a proper evaluation of state aid would be an important element to achieve this objective.
The Bruegel workshop on “Modernising State Aid through better evaluations” reviewed the state of the art and best practices in evaluations of subsidies and discussed the requirements that need to be met in terms of data and methodologies to allow for better evaluations by Member States of State Aid interventions.
Program
10.00 Welcome by Reinhilde Veugelers (Senior Fellow at Bruegel and Professor at KULeuven) (Chair)
10.05 Introducing the scene for introducing better evaluations in state aid by Gert-Jan Koopman (Deputy Director-General, European Commission DG COMP, in charge of the SAM agenda)
10.20 Part I: What can we learn from the state-of-the-art in evaluating subsidies?
- R&D subsidies by Otto Toivanen (KULeuven)
- Regional subsidies by Chiara Criscuolo (LSE and OECD)
- Environmental subsidies by Vojtěch Máca (Charles University Prague)
11.20-11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 Part II: What is needed for carrying out proper evaluations of state aid interventions? - Panel discussion chaired by Kai-Uwe Kühn (Chief Economist European Commission, DG COMP)
Experts joining the panel: Pierre Mohnen (UNU-Maastricht), Roland Rathelot (IPP, Paris), Alberto Martini (University of Piemonte)
12.30 Concluding Remarks
12.45 Lunch Buffet
Event materials
Chiara Criscuolo - presentation
Gert-Jan Koopman - presentation