Proposal for a Council Regulation amending Council Regulation (EC) No 994/98 of 7 May 1998 on the application of Articles 92 and 93 of the Treaty establishing the European Community to certain categories of horizontal state aid and Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on public passenger transport services by rail and by road

This proposal is a key element in State Aid Modernisation (SAM), an initiative launched by the Commission on 8 May 2012, setting out an ambitious state aid reform programme. It should contribute to the overall objectives of the Union, in particular the objective of focusing state aid enforcement on cases having the biggest impact on the internal market and to the EU 2020 strategy to foster growth in a strengthened, dynamic and competitive internal market.

To achieve the objectives of this strategy, the Commission proposes to increase the number of aid categories that may be exempted from the notification requirement and thus cut red tape and reduce the number of aid measures that have to be notified. The categories concerned and the envisaged block exemptions would lay down compatibility conditions which target the types of aid that genuinely contribute to achieving the EU 2020 objectives.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)730: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:730:FIN

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