Global Trade Alert

 On 1 February 2016, the European Commission approved aid worth 133.3 million EUR for a project in the factory of the German car manufacturer Audi in the Hungarian city of Gyor. The plant had previously received state aid in the years 2009 until 2013 (cf. Related Measures).
The aid will be used for two projects. The first will focus on achieving the following objectives: "increased flexibility and diversification in the assembly production, increased output, and vertical integration of the production process" (letter from the EC to Hungary, 30.10.2014, par. 12). The second one shall "increase the flexibility of the assembly operation by replacing the current platform-based technology by the so-called module-based manufacturing process (Modularer Querbaukasten, hereinafter MQB) technology" (par.13).
The project itself began on 10 February 2011 and was scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014 - however, the aid for the investment projects was scheduled to be paid out between 2013 and 2016.
A state measure in the GTA database is assessed solely in terms of the extent to which its implementation affects the extent of discrimination against foreign commercial interests. On this metric, the state aid proposed here is discriminatory.