Press Release: State aid: latest Scoreboard reveals shift in aid towards horizontal objectives but no overall decrease in levels

The European Commission on 20 April 2005 published the 9th edition of the EU State Aid Scoreboard. The main findings were that the total amount of state aid granted by the then fifteen Member States, which was estimated at €53 billion in 2003 (0.57% of EU GDP), showed a stable rather than a downward trend, but that there was a shift away from aid to individual companies and towards horizontal objectives and in particular R&D and the environment.