COMPARATIVE LEGAL ANALYSIS OF CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF STATE AID IN SERBIA AND THE WESTERN BALKAN COUNTRIES - IMPACT ON THE EFFICIENCY OF THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION PROCESS

The control of state aid allocation is an important part of competition policy, due to the selective nature of state aid and possibility of favoring market participants. Establishing of the system of state aid control is a part of the pre-accession commitments of the Western Balkans countries in the integration process into the European Union. The paper examines the degree of the development of the system in the analysed group of countries by applying a comparative - legal analysis. A correlation analysis examines the interdependence between the development of the system of state aid control and the success of the countries in the integration process. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the great importance of building an effective system as a mechanism of competition protection and an important pre-accession commitment of the/those countries.