Proposal for the next College of Commissioners: Mission letter to the designated executive Vice-President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, Teresa Ribera from Spain
Today, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the planned structure of the new College of Commissioners to Parliament. Teresa Ribera from Spain is to be the designated Vice-President for a clean, fair and competitive transition, responsible for the Directorate General for Competition. One of her main tasks will be to implement the ‘Clean Industrial Deal’, which aims to unlock private investments, to create lead markets for tech and aims to put in place conditions for companies to grow and compete. To achieve this, she is expected to work closely with the commissioners of DG GROW (designated Commissioner Stéphane Séjourne from France) and DG CLIMA (designated Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra from the Netherlands).
One of the core elements of this programme, amongst others, will be to make the necessary modifications to the current State aid rules.
In detail, the plans are:
– The development of a new State aid framework to accelerate the green transition, i.e. the roll-out of renewable energy, the deployment of industrial decarbonization and the ensuring of sufficient manufacturing capacity of clean tech.
– The pursuit of further simplification of State aid work by prioritizing work on the most distortive aid.
– The risk to SMEs of being part of a ‘killer acquisition’ by a foreign company must be addressed. This is a reference to the Foreign Subsidies Regulation that came into force last year.
– The support of the implementation of the ‘European Competitiveness Fund’ and IPCEIs for the most strategic sectors and technologies, e.g. by simplifying the State aid review of IPCEIs. Moreover, the authorization of compatible aid in strategic fields shall be accelerated in general.
– The vigorous enforcement of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation.
– The revision of State aid rules to enable housing support measures, notably for energy efficiency and social housing.
These guidelines outline the future scope of tasks and responsibilities.