Making Sense of EU State Aid Requirements: The Case of Green Services

Summary The importance of a circular economy is today widely accepted and advocated, but among the challenges in achieving this, we find difficulties in the implementation of legislation and policies designed to control various waste streams from society. The example used in this article is wood that has been treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), which, in Sweden, has been covered by the rules for hazardous waste since 2002. One year later, in 2003, a survey showed that only 42% to 50% of the expected amount of CCA waste could be traced to the public waste management system. An updated material flow analysis for 2010 revealed that the figure had increased to 73%, whereas the fraction of correctly treated CCA wood waste had increased from 11% to 35%. However, almost one third of the expected volume was still not tracable, and half of the amount that was correctly submitted was incinerated together with nontoxic waste fractions. This results in, for example, arsenic contamination of slag and fly ashes that prevents the further use of these residue products. So, despite legislative instruments, there is still an urgent need for an improved collection of hazardous wood waste, as well as better routines for identifying hazardous flows and separating them from nonhazardous ones. For a circular economy to be achievable, a key priority should be to reduce the gap between intended directions and legislation, on one hand, and activities in practice on the other.

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“…), agriculture (Engström et al. ; Zwaan and Goverde ), climate (Haug et al. ), and energy (Engström et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Persistent Hazardous Waste and the Quest Toward a Circular Economy: The Example of Arsenic in Chromated Copper Arsenate–Treated Wood

Augustsson

Sörme

Karlsson

et al. 2016

J of Industrial Ecology

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“…In the case of state aid, governments notify the Commission of broader aid schemes , which then serve as a framework for awarding individual aid measures. After initial Commission approval, there will be no further scrutiny (Blauberger, 2009a; Zwaan and Goverde, 2010). A last, more active recurring response is to negotiate the way in which state aid rules are applied in a specific case.…”

Section: Implementing Eu State Aid Policy: Coping With Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Working with the EU: How Discourses Shape the Application of EU State Aid Rules

Steunenberg

Zwaan

2023

J of Common Market Studies

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State aid rules are an important part of the European Union's (EU) competition policy that aims to ensure a fair competition in the common market. These rules directly affect national and sub‐national governments of member states, which are sometimes confronted with different and opposing claims about what to do. The question is how implementing civil servants interpret and resolve these claims in practice. In this article, discourse analysis is applied to identify how civil servants apply and interpret state aid rules based on empirical research in the Netherlands. The main finding is that, even within the existing regulatory framework of one member state, the application of state aid rules is understood differently based on the discourses we identified. We describe the content, dissemination amongst civil servants and the relationship of these discourses with compliance. The article shows that discourses matter and help to understand how state aid rules are applied.

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“…The issue at the heart of this case was the public funding element of the proposed scheme, which the EU interpreted as State aid to farmers. After a long period of misunderstanding, a compromise was eventually found which allowed a revised version of the initiative to go ahead (Zwaan and Goverde 2010).…”

Section: Iiii the 'Politics' Of Eu State Aid Policy?mentioning

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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Making Sense of EU State Aid Requirements: The Case of Green Services

Cited by 9 publications

References 35 publications

Persistent Hazardous Waste and the Quest Toward a Circular Economy: The Example of Arsenic in Chromated Copper Arsenate–Treated Wood

Persistent Hazardous Waste and the Quest Toward a Circular Economy: The Example of Arsenic in Chromated Copper Arsenate–Treated Wood

Working with the EU: How Discourses Shape the Application of EU State Aid Rules

Research Handbook on European State Aid Law

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