THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

- welcomes the Commission's intention of concentrating on cases with a particularly strong impact on the internal market and thus moving towards greater prioritisation in aid procedures, which will reduce the burden on all concerned - Commission, Member States and regional and local authorities;
- points out that a suitable starting point for focusing on aid with actual and significant internal market relevance could be to clarify the criterion of impact on cross-border trade and the notion of undertaking;
- calls for account to be taken of the fact that, while payments in respect of activities of a purely local nature may be categorised legally as state aid, they can have a limited impact on trade between Member States;
- calls for a higher threshold for the de minimis regulation, and an increase in the separate de minimis threshold values for services of general economic interest (SGEIs), as well as broadening of the horizontal categories in the enabling regulation and broadening and clarification in the block exemption regulation as options for achieving the Commission's target in the framework of this modernisation initiative;