The Institutional Setting for State Aid Control in Serbia and the Long Road to “Operational Independence”

Marko Milenković

Abstract

According to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement concluded with the European Union, the process of the integration of the Republic of Serbia into the European Union includes an obligation to introduce rules on the control of state aid in the country and for that purpose to establish an operationally independent authority entrusted with the powers necessary to implement in
full the state aid rules on a national level. The aim of this paper is to examine models of state aid control mechanism that have been developed in various EU Member States, which were required to establish such control mechanisms as part of the EU accession process, and to consider challenges and prospects of reforming Serbian institutional setting. The paper concludes that the identification of the appropriate form of institutional setup for state aid control must take account of national specificities – particular the stage within the transition process reached by the country in question, the level of economic transformation undertaken before enactment of reforms, the role of independent bodies within the legal system as well as the overall societal and political context.

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• Stabilisation and Association Agreement between the European Communities and Their Member States of the One Part, and the Republic of Serbia, of the Other Part, “Official Gazette of RS-International Agreements”, no. 83/2008.