AIDING CAR INDUSTRY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

This paper focuses on state aid to the car sector in the EU and its effectiveness. It presents how such support has been changing over time. At the beginning the general normative principles on state aid and the specific law provisions which are typical of the sector have been described. The next part describes the economic situation of the sector in the context of recent financial crisis. The following sections show the changes in EU policy towards state aid, especially an interplay of member states` policies and EC control. Special attention has been paid to the reorientation of the EU objectives – from the purely sectoral towards the horizontal ones. On the one hand there was a slowdown in the amount of aid granted, on the other this aid has been increasingly devised as regional development aid.