The South-East European (SEE) countries, having signed Stabilisation
and Association Agreements with the European Union, are required to establish an
operationally independent state aid monitoring authority, to harmonise their legislative
framework with that of the EU, and to demonstrate a credible enforcement
record. This paper analyses whether these requirements for EU accession have been
achieved so far. The authors conducted a comparative cross-country analysis and
tried to identify common problems and enforcement trends. As the paper elucidates,
the SEE countries have largely met the EU requirements by harmonising their
national state aid acts and corresponding by-laws with EU law. However, these rules
are applied in a different socio-economic context and by national authorities of
dubious independence from the government, which results in a modest enforcement
record. As may be derived from the pre-accession experience of the countries of
Central and Eastern Europe, the effectiveness of state aid control mechanisms is
conditioned by the credibility of the country’s EU perspective. And the South-East
European countries have only just started their European journey.

EB00000004256K

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• State Aid Control in South-East Europe: Waiting for a Wake-up Call