Chaired by Prime Minister Edi Rama, the National Economic Council discussed in a meeting the state aid made available to support business. According to the Prime Minister, this aid has been totally mismanaged for years and used in violation of the EU legislation, in addition to favouring unfair competition.

“The amount of state aid in Albania during 2007-2012 was almost the same as the bill that the previous government left as unpaid debts for investment or services received from third parties. In this case, 631 million Euros. In our view, a serious problem is that the Albanian state used aid in contravention of the EU legislation, and often to favour unfair competition.” The Prime Minister noted that in the past three years there has been a new orientation of policies for state aid to support priority sectors and their coordination with fiscal and employment policies. “Policies for state aid have been reviewed to reorient the support to priority sectors and to coordinate this aid with fiscal and employment policies. For the first time we have created a mechanism closely linking state aid to employment, helping those sectors that guarantee more employment for Albanians. The sectors that benefited most from state aid in 2015 were agriculture with 25% of the total, water supply and sanitation with 7%, transport with 7%, and then employment promotion with 4.6%.

The Prime Minister explained that companies that must apply to benefit from state aid fund, go through a process that examines the impact of this aid on economy, employment, the environment, etc. He stated inter alia that the new legal framework developed has been fully harmonized with the EU legislation in this field.

“Companies that have to apply to benefit from state aid fund go through a process that examines the impact of this aid on economy, employment, the environment and so on. Actually, following the legal amendments made this year in the state aid law, the competition authority should examine all applications case by case. The Authority has now the possibility to prevent cases where major aid schemes may bring negative consequences such as breach of competition rules, or when business is deemed to receive through aid more than it is due, based on the impact it has. The role that the competition authority has acquired at least legally, is similar in function to the European Commission for the assistance provided by the EU, because every important scheme is approved by this Commission only after it is proven to have a positive impact on the economy and on the field of competition. The legal framework that we have developed is of course in full compliance with the EU legislation which, in the field of competition and state aid, has a particularly strict set of rules. We believe that the changes undertaken in the field of state aid have created the premises for the creation of a genuine support mechanism for a more productive, more innovative and more diversified economy.