Issue framing in the European Commission: State aid policy and the single market

Aydin, Umut

doi:10.1057/cep.2012.36

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Economic crises (Hall 1993) and other focusing events (Birkland 1997) have high visibility and can be expected to gain public attention, provoking a response from policymakers (Zahariadis 2008). Policy windows may also be thrown open as a result of cognate policy initiatives and reforms (Aydin 2014). We maintain, therefore, that structural factors are crucial for enabling actors to bring to the fore specific ideas about how a problem should be understood and framed, as well as what solutions are possible.…”

Section: Policy Entrepreneurs and Problem Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy entrepreneurs and problem definition: the case of European student mobility

Pagliarello

Cini

2023

J. Pub. Pol.

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In the literature on the role of agency in the policy process, relatively little attention has been devoted to how agents define policy problems. This article helps to address this gap by asking when and how policy entrepreneurs are successful in defining problems. The article rests on a framework that shows how policy entrepreneurs holding specific ideas and given a propitious socioeconomic context are able to define problems, translate those problems into new frames, and draw on those frames, while using their personal skills and political and institutional resources, to help build supportive coalitions in favor of policy change. Illustrated by a puzzling case in the field of European mobility policy, the article offers a new perspective on the role of ideas at the problem definition stage of the policy process, while providing a richer understanding of the policy entrepreneur as a driver of policy change.

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Section: Policy Entrepreneurs and Problem Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy entrepreneurs and problem definition: the case of European student mobility

Pagliarello

Cini

2023

J. Pub. Pol.

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“…The Commission was therefore able to 'safeguard its exclusive competence in State aid control (ibid: 265; see also Doleys 2012: 529) Undoubtedly, the Commission's best ally in promoting the integration of EU State aid control in cases of Member State resistance is the CJEU (Smith 1998: 66f. ;Aydin 2014). First and foremost, the ECJ decisively supported the Commission in interpreting broadly the State aid prohibition and, thus, often helped to counter Member States' 'creative' efforts to circumvent EU State aid control.…”

Section: III the Drivers Of Eu State Aid Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Working alongside the EU institutions, private complainants have also played a significant, if ambivalent role in the evolution EU State aid policy (Aydin 2014). Private complaints help the Commission to detect non-notified State aid measures, and have been especially important in trade disputes over the grant of aid (Damro 2013).…”

Section: III the Drivers Of Eu State Aid Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research Handbook on European State Aid Law

Hancher¹,

López²

2021

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This chapter reviews the political science research on European Union (EU) State aid policy. The literature focuses primarily on the evolution of State aid control and on the institutions and actors who play a role in the policy. Resting on Treaty provisions that were little used in the first decades of the European Community, the Commission's incremental soft law approach, supportive jurisprudence from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and the involvement private complainants have helped bring together Commission and Member State interests in support of State aid control. The Commission's handling of the financial crisis, a test for the more mature regime, has been largely judged a success. Over time policy initiatives have helped to reduce and target national subsidies, and the enforcement of and compliance with the Treaty provisions have improved dramatically since the late 1980s. The political dimension of the policy seems to have less resonance these days, as there are fewer high-profile controversial cases than in the past, but there are still interesting questions to be addressed about the way in which competition, regional, environmental, cultural and industrial policies are balanced against each other in the design and application of the EU-level policy and decision-making, and what the implications of UK's departure from the EU and the emergence of populist governments and leaders in the Member States might mean for State aid control.

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“…This alternative view is also brought forward in in the political science literature on state aid in which it is argued that the development and functioning of the regime is not guided by technocratic standards alone. Several authors have pointed at the relevance of political factors, including member state characteristics, in the development of the regime (Doleys 2013; Kassim and Lyons 2013;Aydin 2014) and in the enforcement of state aid rules in individual cases (Thielemann 1999;Featherstone and Papadimitriou 2007;Finke 2020). However, other studies have concluded that the impact of political considerations on enforcement in individual cases was limited to substantive policy preferences of the Commission, and that enforcement outcomes were mostly dependent upon managerial factors .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Permission to bail out EU’s national flag carriers? Technocratic and political determinants of commission approval of state aid to national airlines in difficulties in the pre-COVID era

Druenen

2022

J. Pub. Pol.

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The enforcement of EU state aid rules is often portrayed as mainly driven by technocratic standards, but there are indications that political factors also play a role. However, their exact impact and relationship with technocratic factors remain unknown. This article studies under which technocratic and political conditions the Commission approves or does not approve state aid to national airlines. Based on a crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of all 14 cases of alleged state aid to national airlines between 2004 and 2019, the article shows that both the approval and non-approval of aid are predominantly dependent upon the Commission’s technocratic assessment: a low degree of market distortion turns out to be a sufficient condition for the approval of aid, whereas a high degree of market distortion is a necessary condition for the non-approval of aid. However, in some cases, political factors are decisive in determining enforcement outcomes.

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Issue framing in the European Commission: State aid policy and the single market

Cited by 6 publications

References 32 publications

Policy entrepreneurs and problem definition: the case of European student mobility

Policy entrepreneurs and problem definition: the case of European student mobility

Research Handbook on European State Aid Law

Permission to bail out EU’s national flag carriers? Technocratic and political determinants of commission approval of state aid to national airlines in difficulties in the pre-COVID era

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