Second Regional Conference on State Aid and Western Balkans’ Economies

The second Regional Conference “State Aid and Western Balkans’ Economies” will be held on Wednesday, 24 November 2021, in the organisation of the EU project Support to the Commission for State Aid Control.

The conference will bring together representatives of the European Commission, the Commission for State Aid Control, the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia and European experts in the field of state aid. Opening remarks will be given by the President of the Commission for State Aid Control, Vladimir Antonijevic, the Head of Operations II in the EU Delegation to Serbia Martin Klaucke and the project leader Radmila Mihic. The representative of the European Commission – Directorate General for Competition, Alberto di Majo will present the latest development when it comes to EU state aid rules. Andrea Biondi, a professor at King’s College London and the College of Europe, will talk about fiscal measures and state aid, while Lithuania’s experience in granting state aid during the Covid-19 pandemic will be presented by Justina Paulauskaite from the National Competition Council of Lithuania.

In the second part of the conference, a round table “Challenges for state aid institutions in the Western Balkans Six” will be held, bringing together representatives of state aid control bodies from the region. A CEFTA representative will also join the discussion.
The conference will be held online, via the Zoom platform and can be followed at the following link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83020764942

This is the second Regional Conference on State Aid organised by the project in the cooperation with the Commission for State Aid Control. The first one was held on September 26-27, 2019 in Belgrade and gathered 100 participants from the region and EU member states, as the first such gathering on state aid in the Western Balkans.

The conference will also present the results of the project Support to the Commission for State Aid Control, which was financed by the EU with 999,000 euros and managed by the Ministry of Finance – Department for Contracting and Financing of European Union Funded Programmes. Since its inception in February 2019, in 34 months of implementation the project has contributed to the establishment of a new legal framework for state aid in Serbia, organised training sessions on EU state aid rules for more than 1,100 public sector employees in Serbia, as well as on-the-job trainings in 146 local government units. In total, 14 workshops were held to disseminate basic knowledge and exchange experiences of EU member states on the state aid. The State Aid Register has been prepared, as a database available to the competent institutions, while members of the State Aid Control Commission and its professional service have been trained to use the Tool for Economic and Financial Analysis and the State Aid Calculator. Finally, two manuals have been prepared – on basic state aid rules in the EU and on new state aid rules in the Republic of Serbia.

The project ends on December 12, 2021.