Public consultation on the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER)

The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise advocates a strict State aid regime. State aid should only be used in exceptional circumstances, primarily where there is a clear market failure and where no other policy instruments are more appropriate. This is due to the distortive effects on competition that State aid typically entails—both between individual undertakings and between countries.

The GBER fulfils an important role in the state aid rules, to allow for limited amounts of aid within certain categories to be granted in a non-bureaucratic and efficient way. We largely endorse the type of changes the Commission is proposing, to simplify, streamline and update the GBER to be more in line with current policy, social, market and technological developments. However, we have some suggestions for improvements, which can be read in the attached document.