The dynamics of institution building: State aids, the European commission, and the court of justice of the European Union

Alves, Amanda M.; Brousseau, Éric; Yeung, Timothy Yu-Cheong

doi:10.1016/j.jce.2021.02.001

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Kassim and Lyons, 2013; Schito, 2021). So far, it has focused largely on the development of the policy regime (e.g., Akman and Kassim, 2010; Cini, 2001), its impact on the targeting of national state aid policies (Blauberger, 2009b; Botta and Schwellnuss, 2015; Franchino and Mainenti, 2016; Hölscher et al, 2017; Schito, 2021; Zahariadis, 2013) or the role of the Commission (and its interaction with member states) in enforcing the rules (e.g., Alves et al, 2021; Finke, 2020; Smith, 1998; van Druenen and Zwaan, 2022; van Druenen et al, 2022). Less work is done on the practical application of state aid rules in member states (Franchino and Mainenti, 2016; Lindstrom, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with the EU: How Discourses Shape the Application of EU State Aid Rules

Steunenberg

Zwaan

2023

J of Common Market Studies

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State aid rules are an important part of the European Union's (EU) competition policy that aims to ensure a fair competition in the common market. These rules directly affect national and sub‐national governments of member states, which are sometimes confronted with different and opposing claims about what to do. The question is how implementing civil servants interpret and resolve these claims in practice. In this article, discourse analysis is applied to identify how civil servants apply and interpret state aid rules based on empirical research in the Netherlands. The main finding is that, even within the existing regulatory framework of one member state, the application of state aid rules is understood differently based on the discourses we identified. We describe the content, dissemination amongst civil servants and the relationship of these discourses with compliance. The article shows that discourses matter and help to understand how state aid rules are applied.

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