At a conference of the German Federation of Industries (BDI) and the Berlin Round Table on EU State Aid Law in Berlin, European Commissioner for Competition Policy Neelie Kroes presented the EU Commission’s new action plan on state aid. In this context, she declared: “I say that we have to target and control state aid. Our new systems have now been delivered and from the evidence we have – less red tape and faster decisions – they seem to be working.”

According to the new General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), workshops for adapted work are still covered by the exemptions included into the regulation: Basically, exceptions are targeted on the most obvious market failures. As a consequence, the regulation concerns those areas in which the state has to intervene due to a lack of equivalent market solutions. Those criteria particularly apply to the labour market: In her speech, Neelie Kroes explicitly mentions “the failure (of the market) to fully use the potential of everyone in the labour force”.

In conclusion, it becomes clear that workshops for adapted work still occupy a legitimate place in modern state aid policy.

The text of the speech can be retrieved under the following internet link: http://europa.eu