Of ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Subsidies: European State Aid Control through Soft and Hard Law

摘要: European state aid control, a part of competition policy, typically follows the logic negative integration. It constrains potential for member states to distort by reducing their ability subsidise industry. In addition, this paper argues, ambiguous Treaty rules and heterogeneous preferences have enabled Commission act as supranational entrepreneur, not only enforcing prohibition distortive aid, but also developing its own vision ‘good’ policy. order prevent or settle political conflict about individual decisions, has sought establish more general criteria that it still deems admissible. These been codified into complex system soft law and, recently, hard law. The thus created positive integration ‘from above’ increasingly influences objectives national policies.