Fundamental principles and real practice. The Kyiv City State Administration held a training on the application of state aid legislation

The Antimonopoly Committee and experts of the EU Project "Support to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine for Enforcing State Aid Rules " (SESAR) held a seminar on September 28 at the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) on the practice of applying state aid legislation. The event was initiated by local authorities. It was attended by more than 70 representatives of the Kyiv City State Administration, district administrations of Kyiv and local utilities.

At the beginning of the training, Mykola Povoroznyk, First Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration, expressed confidence in the effectiveness and necessity of such exercises.

"Today, all participants must leave this hall with clear answers to all their questions. This is not our first meeting with the AMCU representatives on this topic, and over time the number of difficult questions is reducing. Now we have an opportunity to get answers directly from those who shape Ukraine's antitrust policy, " - said a local government official.

In turn, the Chair of the AMCU Olha Pishchanska reminded that starting next year Ukraine will have to fully implement European norms of legislation on state aid and strictly comply with them.

"We still have two most common problems related to the state aid legislation: misunderstanding of its rules and requirements or deliberate non-compliance with them. As a result, up to 80% of notifications on the State Aid to the AMCU do not actually require our approval. On the other hand, the AMCU made a decision to return to the budgets about 40 million UAH (≈ 1.31 million EUR) of illegally allocated funds only last year"- Olha Pishchanska said.

She acknowledged that unnecessary appeals to the AMCU, as well as ignoring the approval, lead to a loss of time and resources for both the AMCU and the providers and recipients of state aid.

At the same time, SESAR Project Leader Stefan Sabau said that the trainings are funded by the European Union, as EU countries are interested in the quality implementation of these laws in Ukraine.

"The rules of state aid are really complicated. However, in the EU they have been helping the authorities to spend money efficiently for more than 60 years, are a very effective tool for supporting competition and the economy, and thus are the key to improving the living standards of citizens" said the Project leader.

It will be recalled that the AMCU and SESAR experts regularly conduct trainings on the application of state aid rules in various cities of Ukraine. The last of them took place in September in Dnipro city.