Piergiovanni’s appointment also signals the president’s heightened attention to a policy area that has become increasingly political, both externally, in the context of transatlantic trade tensions, and internally, as the bloc looks to revisit rules on mergers and public industry funding in an effort to boost economic growth.
Earlier this week, the Commission halted an antitrust decision targeting search giant Google under U.S. pressure in trade talks.
The EU executive is also under increasing pressure to bend rules on public industry funding — or state aid — to allow EU countries to funnel cash into their industries. There are also calls to relax merger rules to allow companies to become bigger and compete on the global stage as European champions.
Piergiovanni, who joined the Commission in 2011 from a top American law firm in Brussels, knows a thing or two about European champions. In 2018, he was appointed to lead the competition department’s work on the most controversial merger of the decade, the Franco-German attempt to merge Siemens and Alstom to create a continental rail giant, which was ultimately blocked. The decision to deny the deal infuriated France and Germany while becoming the poster child of the competition directorate’s strict enforcement.
A loyal and rigorous official from Italy’s northern coastal region of Liguria, Piergiovanni will be a solid link between the top of the EU executive and the competition directorate, which recently said goodbye to its top official, Frenchman Olivier Guersent. “Don’t scratch the Rolls-Royce,” were Guersent’s parting words to his successor. The Rolls-Royce, is, of course, DG COMP, which the official described as the most prized directorate to work in, but also an area which should remain immune from political interference and corporate pressure.
Giovanna Faggionato contributed to this report.