A formal investigation only comes when the Commission, which has to approve state-aid grants, has completed a preliminary investigation. Amlia Torres, spokeswoman on competition policy for Commissioner Mario Monti, explained to letsrecycle.com that under EU state aid procedures, if the Commission has “doubts about the legality of state aid plans it must start a formal investigation.”
A statement from the Commission today said that the project concerns notified investment aid of 35 million euros in favour of Shotton for the adaptation of existing paper machines to use wastepaper instead of virgin pulp. “The total cost of the project amounts to 200 million euros. The UK claims that 137 million euros of this amount would be eligible for aid under the environmental aid guidelines. After deducting benefits related to the investment, the aid intensity would be 26.3 %.”
The main reason for opening the formal investigation procedure into the Shotton planned support is because the Commission has “doubts whether it qualifies as an environmental project.”
The Commission also says that even if the environmental guidelines were to apply, the Commission “at this stage has doubts that the eligible costs were calculated in accordance with the environmental guidelines. According to the environmental guidelines, the eligible costs should be confined strictly to the extra investment costs necessary to meet the environmental objectives. However, the costs presented by the UK take into account the overall investment costs in the calculation and it is not clear whether the net benefits have been calculated appropriately.”
The EU statement can be seen at: EU and Shotton.
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