How state aid became a Brexit deal-breaker
Tories used to think controls on subsidies were the best thing about Brussels. Now they want to open the spending taps
FOR YEARS only left-wingers like Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, and Bob Crow, a trade-union honcho, were bothered by Europe’s state-aid regime. For Conservative Eurosceptics, it was the best thing about Brussels. Rules prohibiting distortive subsidies to businesses were cast in the European Union’s founding treaty, but it was Margaret Thatcher who gave them teeth. For her they were a means of rolling back the state at home and abroad. She made common cause with Jacques Delors, the architect of the single market. Europe’s ailing economies could only integrate and become competitive, the logic ran, if their governments stopped doping companies on public money.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Opening the taps”
Britain September 19th 2020
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From the September 19th 2020 edition
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