european
economics sprouted when the
community State aid monitoring became an economic issue.
In 2005, under the impetus of Competition
Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the European Commission launched a broad
State aid reform with the motto “Less and better targeted State aids”.
A major component of this reform was the definition and thereafter the
implementation of a refined economic
approach in State aid law.
The latter, fully inspired on microeconomic theory (market failures,
incentive effect, distortions of competition) consists in balancing
positive and negative economic effects of an aid so as to establish
whether it is in line with EU State aid rules.
This refined economic approach was equipped for the first time in 2007
with the entry into force of the new Community framework for State aid
for Research and Development and Innovation. It is fully translated
within the procedure of individual
notification with detailed assessment to the European
Commission, which applies when a business receives a considerable aid
amount (several million euros) for a strategic project.
From 2007 onwards, Marc Isabelle actively participated in developing
new tools and best practices applied to State support within this
renovated Community framework, as the person in charge of individual
notifications of funding granted by a new French State agency (Agence
de l’Innovation Industrielle, merged with Oseo in 2008). During the
first two years of enforcement of the new economic approach, the European Commission has built more than
50% of its decision-making for RDI individual aids on the basis of
notifications from AII.
In 2009, Marc Isabelle started european
economics to capitalise on the
expertise developed during his numerous interactions with the European
Commission. Since then, european
economics has doubled its
revenues each year
and is expected to continue growing at this pace in 2014 with the
continuity of the French massive funding programme “Investissements
d’Avenir”, worth € 34 billion, along with the penetration of new
markets.