Competition Council approved the Regulation regarding the State aid Registry (Available only in Romanian)

Document:

Facilities granted by the State, from State resources or managed by the State, having the potential to distort competition and affect trade between Member States are considered, according with the provision of the art. 107 align. (1) from the Treaty on the functioning of the European Community, to represent State aid.

From this perspective, State aid includes facilities directly granted from the State budget, facilities granted from the budgets of the local or regional public authorities, facilities granted from the budgets of the State institutions and enterprises or from the community budget (so called, ”structural funds”).

As a consequence, the European Union’s institutions consider the control and monitoring process of the State aid and de minimis aid to be very important, no matter which are the grantor, the budgetary source or the objectives taken into considerations in the process of granting.

In this context, one of the ex-ante conditionalities negociated by the Romanian authorities with the European Commission and included into the document called „Position of the Commission’s services regarding the development of a Partnership Agreement and of some programs in Romania for 2014-2020”, stipulated the necessity to create an „appropriate recording system for the monitorization of the State aid expences, able to assure the compliance with the State aid rules and the cumulation rules”.

In order to fulfil the conditionalities, the Competition Council, with the collaboration of the Special Telecommunication Service, designed and developed an unique database and IT system which will register State aid and de minimis measures, the granted aid and payments made in Romania from national and community funds. The system will allow:

–       the verification of the eligibility of the potential State aid/de minimis aid beneficiaries, irrespective of the funds involved;

–       the quick identification and remediation of the eventual breaches of the national and community legislation in the State aid field;

–       the generation of quick, complex and flexible reports regarding the State aid/de minimis measures implemented, the funds granted and the correction made.

The access to the State aid Registry – RegAS – is restricted by password and it will be allowed to the individual users belonging to the following institutions:

a)  Competition Council (the territorial inspectorates of the Competition Council are included, too);

b)  grantors and initiators of the State aid measures;

c)  administrators and  sub-administrators of the State aid measures;

d)  institutions controlling and monitoring State aid, including those granted from the community funds;

e)  institutions involved in defining, implementing and monitoring policies and strategies, at national level.

Because of the novelty of the IT system and the associated database, significant diversity and volume of the information that have to be loaded and gestionated, the large number of the institutions and individual users, the necessity to load all the data corectly and in the shortest period of time possible, RegAS’s use necessitated reglementation through a Regulation issued by the Competition Council