La Gestió europea de les ajudes d’estat durant la recent crisi financera i la seva adequació al sistema comunitari de defensa de la competencia

By transforming the exercise of sovereignty in Europe, the procedure of European construction rises two fundamental questions to the political scientists. The first one refers to the impact this process has on the State. The second one brings us to the Political nature of the EU. Interrelated questions, which have generated a significant corpus of theory since the 50s, can be divided into two categories.
In a crisis context, states are in a trade-off between "relaxing" the system of control of State aid to reduce the impact of the recession, or to keep it and thus avoid competitive distortions. This is a special case of trade-off between the short and the long term. This research investigates how European policy has managed the demand for aid during the recent financial crisis. The terms "law" and "procedure" are differentiated and we can determine that while the first has been adapted to the new crisis in order to accommodate rescue measurements, a series of evidence suggests that the second was "relaxed", and that it may have been a second best strategy to reduce the moral hazard associated with bailouts and, moreover, a strategy necessary to maintain a proper control system of the State aid.

• Primary Source

Managing State Aid in Times of Crisis: The Role of the European Commission http://www.jhubc.it/ecpr-porto/virtualpaperroom/084.pdf

Competition Policy, Bailouts and the Economic Crisis http://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.112187!CCP09-4.pdf

Competition policy in troubled times http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/speeches/2009/spe0109.pdf

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