Press Release: State aid: Commission rules against the unequal treatment resulting from certain insurance policies (contrats solidaires and contrats responsables)

The European Commission has reached the conclusion that a French plan to grant tax aid to insurers for managing certain supplementary sickness insurance policies ("contrats solidaires" and "contrats responsables") is not compatible with the rules on state aid in the EC Treaty. Without calling into question the social objective of the proposed measures, the Commission’s investigation has shown that they were not of a kind to guarantee that benefits would actually be passed on to the final consumer. The measures also risked creating discrimination in favour of the incumbents. The Commission tried to persuade France to modify the two regimes so as to render them acceptable. In 2007 it approved a similar regime of supplementary health insurance for French civil servants. As the policies are still in draft form this decision does not give rise to aid recovery.