Issue framing in the European Commission: State aid policy and the single market

State aid rules of the European Union regulate member states’ subsidies to industry and grant the European Commission extensive powers to monitor compliance with these rules. Until the 1980s, the Commission was reluctant to use these powers and state aid control in the Community remained weak. Since then, its control over member state aid has increased gradually, resulting in more extensive investigative powers, and on average, lower levels of state aid in the EU. In this article, I argue that the European Commission's strategic framing of the state aid issue played a significant role in the transformation of the policy in the late 1980s and the 1990s. As a policy entrepreneur, the Commission framed the issue of state aids in relation to market integration in the 1980s and the Economic and Monetary Union in the 1990s, and thus helped shape the interests of the member states and economic actors and paved the way for the gradual tightening of state aid control.