There’s just one hitch: EU rules technically prevent countries from handing industries cash like that. The idea is to stop richer countries like Germany from splashing government cash on companies that smaller and more cash-strapped nations will not be able to do, creating unfair distortions in the EU market.
“There is no way Brussels will allow that without a fight,” said Oliver Bretz, who heads boutique firm Euclid Law and advises, among others, Romania’s energy-intensive industry association.
Yet the EU is increasingly bending its own rules in a post-pandemic world, anxious to juice its stagnant economy and not fall behind the U.S. and China. And that’s the expectation here, lawyers and economists told POLITICO. The two sides will clash, yes, but everyone would prefer an amicable, negotiated compromise.
“Explicit state aid prohibitions by way of decision are rare, even more so now than in the past,” said Ulrich Soltész, an antitrust partner at German law firm Gleiss Lutz.
Timing, in other words, is everything.
Grumbling at Germany
Few people, if any, are arguing that Germany’s plan is anything but an industrial subsidy, or “state aid” in EU jargon.
