Autonomy by the Rules: The European Commission and the Development of State Aid Policy

The European Commission has enhanced its autonomy to implement state aid policy with a superstructure of frameworks and guidelines constructed on the base of its Treaty‐derived competence. The Commission’s activism has also mobilized private sector actors whose interest in state aid monitoring reinforces the Commission’s claim to being a neutral enforcement agent. However, these constituencies have also made new demands on Commission resources that may constrain the Commission. This finding has important implications for the scope of historical institutionalist analysis, which typically focuses on how Member State governments are constrained by past decisions. Ultimately the autonomy of supranational institutions may be self‐limiting, with emerging constraints deriving not from the preferences of Member State governments, but from the very structuring of the European polity fostered by the autonomous actions of supranational institutions themselves.