Brussels, 9 November 2005 - The European Commission has decided not to raise any objections to the new Belgian system for financing the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (AFSCA). Financing is based on a clear distinction between directly invoicing the real cost of Agency services provided to private operators, in the form of ‘fees', and sharing the costs of general random checks programmes, in the form of ‘contributions'.
When analysing the application of the State aid rules to the notified measures, the Commission found that public resources, such as revenue from contributions or direct grants, are to be used to finance the activities and services provided to the sector by the AFSCA.
As for the potential impact of this system on competition (favouring specific companies or products), the Commission has decided that:
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in the pursuit of its mission to ‘ensure the safety of the food chain and the quality of foods with a view to protecting human, animal and plant health’, the AFSCA is acting not as a private operator but as a public authority and that, consequently, it is not in receipt of State aid;
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there is no economic bias in favour of economic operators covered by Agency activities financed by fees and that, consequently, they are not in receipt of aid;
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as regards the financing of general random checks by fixed contributions, the operators receive no specific economic advantage and, consequently, no aid, given the compulsory nature of the checks and the fact that they cannot be invoiced directly to an individual company as they aim to ensure that the entire food chain is monitored (they benefit all operators and aim to protect health and food safety in Belgium);
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using contributions to finance part of the cost of BSE tests and other checks linked directly to the production and placing on the market of certain products is a form of State aid which complies with the Guidelines on State aids linked to BSE tests;
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the actual financing mechanism contains no specific provisions which would be contrary to other provisions of the Treaty, and the parameters for distributing the sum of contributions among operators in the various sectors are objective and fair criteria which do not lead to discriminatory treatment as regards the origin of the products.
Considering that some of the measures do not constitute aid and that the rest do not raise doubts about the system’s compatibility with the rules on State aid, the Commission has therefore decided not to raise any objections.