Commissioner Breton’s reaction to the German plan: “Let’s verify that it is compatible with state aid”

The European Internal Market commissioner Thierry Breton said today that we must “verify” that Germany’s massive energy plan to support its economy is “compatible with state aid”, while he repeated his call for member states to “react in a coordinated manner”.

The announcement last week from Germany of a national plan 200 billion euros to protect its economy from rising energy prices has drawn criticism from European officials, who fear unfair competition and fragmentation of the single market, as numerous states are unable to release such sums to protect their businesses.

“Germany announced a gigantic plan of 200 billion, we must now discuss, first we obviously need to verify that all this is certainly compatible with state aidwe are working on this with my colleague Margrethe Vestager (Competition Commissioner) so that there is exactly this compatibility,” Breton told BFMTV.

“If Germany estimates that it is 200 billion, very well, but in these conditions, all other countries must have access to loans to meet their own identical needs,” he stressed.

“It is very important that all states have the same access to borrowing, and not some, because let’s say they have maybe a better fiscal situation than others, to be able to do it before others and in conditions that create distortion in the market”, he stressed.

Read more: Germany: Commission audit of the 200 billion euro support package for energy

According to Breton, “the amount is very important, (…) the question arises of the legitimate assumption of debt by each of the countries”.

“For weeks, even months now, I’ve been calling on every state to do what they need to do to help industrial sectors, we have many industrial sectors that are very dependent on energy, we can think of steel, zinc, paper, chemicals, the glass, which are affected a lot, this weakens our competitiveness”, pointed out Breton.

Member states are “reacting and that’s good, but they need to do it in a coordinated way, because the internal market works because we have more or less the same rules everywhere”, he underlined.

“It is very important that states do what they have to do, it is good that Germany is doing it as well as others, but what is very important is to do it in a coordinated way, in harmony. No state is strong enough to face this crisis, everyone has to borrow“, reminded the European commissioner.

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