The European Commission consulted stakeholders on proposals to remedy the distortive effects of foreign subsidies on the EU internal market.
AFEP supports its 3 module-approach as well as the proposals on distortive foreign subsidies in the context of EU funding, and suggests some clarifications and modifications:
- A strict specialisation of modules to avoid overlapping effects and the development of ex-post controls in particular for merger and acquisition operations, which should with public procurement respectively fall under Modules 2 and 3, while Module 1 should be a subsidiary tool to control the other distorting effects on the internal market;
- The use of a methodology similar to the one already existing for merger control to better target potentially distortive merger and acquisitions transactions (by notably retaining the notion of control and quantitative thresholds);
- An alternative two-tier system for public procurement (at Union and decentralised levels) to simplify the conditions for rejecting bids based on distortive subsidies and limit administrative burden.