Economy - published on 15 June 2021
Source: European Commission Spokesperson’s Service
The 2020 State Aid
Scoreboard, published today by the European Commission, provides a comprehensive overview of EU State aid expenditure in 2019 for the 27 EU Member States and the UK. According to the
expenditure reports provided by Member States for 2019, State aid spending increased in 2019, both in absolute amounts and relative to GDP. In 2019, Member States spent €134.6 billion, i.e.
0.81% of GDP, on State aid at EU level. This figure does not include aid to services of general economic interest, railways, agriculture and fisheries and represents an increase of about 3.6%
(€130 billion) compared to 2018 expenditure.
Member States continued to make extensive use of the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) in 2019: 1,473 new GBER measures were implemented, without advance notification to the Commission,
corresponding to 95.5% of all new State aid measures for which expenditure was reported for the first time. The amount of aid granted under the GBER increased by 7.8% in 2019. The 2020 Scoreboard
highlights the positive impact of State aid policy in steering public support towards objectives of common European interest, as about 51% of total spending (€69.1 billion) was granted in support
of environmental projects and energy savings, 10% (€13.9 billion) to research, development and innovation, and 8.5% (€11.5 billion) to regional development. State aid measures currently in force
are significantly heterogeneous in terms of expenditure.
In total, 23 schemes have reported expenditure above €1 billion in 2019, while 169 measures are above €100 million. These figures relate to 2019 aid expenditures and therefore have
not been affected by the aid that Member States have granted in the context of the coronavirus outbreak. The 2020 expenditure figures will be reported by Member States in the course of this year
and published by the Commission in early 2021. In the meantime, the Commission has conducted a survey with Member States covering COVID-related aid expenditure until December 2020. The results of
this survey can be found
here. State aid expenditure data gathered by the Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition is available on its
data repository webpage.
