Press Release: Aid to Bavarian ‘machinery rings’ partially incompatible with State aid rules

The European Commission took a final decision on 14 December 2004 on aid worth €5 million/year granted by Bavaria between 1991 and 2000 to machinery rings and KBM, their umbrella organisation. Aid for which no evidence could be provided that it only benefited farmers must be recovered from the machinery rings as from 1991. The Commission also found that the aid may have distorted competition outside the agriculture sector by cross-subsidising the machinery rings' commercial subsidiaries. However, the Commission cleared aid benefiting farmers (worth, on average, € 50 a year) which it found too small to distort competition.