This marks a stark contrast from 10 years of high-powered antitrust enforcement by Vestager, who made Silicon Valley take notice of Brussels bureaucrats with hefty fines, back-tax bills and deal vetos.
“We are coming out of two mandates with Margrethe Vestager, who was really a driving force,” French Renew lawmaker Stéphanie Yon-Courtin told POLITICO. “And now I’m afraid it’s going to be an empty shell,” she said of the competition portfolio, pointing to the low prominence given so far to antitrust in what Ribera has been told to do and what she herself is committing to.
Policing deals and foreign government aid
Mergers feature prominently in the instructions Ribera got. She will be under pressure to reform how the EU checks and blocks deals, with Germany and France calling for rules to allow bigger airlines and telecom companies. Two high-level reports recently backed more telecom consolidation and scaled-up firms to make the European economy more efficient and resilient.
But changing merger rules is easier said than done. Allowing bigger national champions could come to the detriment of smaller companies and consumers.
“With a big push coming from telecom incumbents and major airlines to get bigger in European markets, can creating ‘European champions’ not end up in fact reducing innovation in the European market and therefore harming consumers?” asked Agustín Reyna of the consumer advocacy group BEUC.
A specific call to police “killer acquisitions,” where big companies snap up innovative potential rivals, could also lead to friction with U.S. tech or pharma companies, which have attracted most recent EU enforcement efforts. Ribera could end up having to defend against accusations that the EU is taking a harsher line with U.S. deals to protect its own industry.
