Dn her political orientations for the next mandate of the European Commission, its president, Ursula von der Leyen, notably announced “a new approach to competition policy”.
Behind this ambitious term, it is a question of changing the assessment of concentration operations (mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures) in a direction more favorable to companies developing on global markets. The comment obviously echoes the criticism addressed to the Commission following its refusal, in 2019, of the merger between Alstom and Siemens to create a “European champion” of rail.
Several politicians had asked the Commission to take industrial policy better into account when it is called upon to decide on the authorization of a merger, without sticking to the strict short-term situation of competition in Europe. .
Several strategic sectors
The question is all the more relevant for the future since the orientations of the presidency, but also the voluminous report submitted by Mario Draghi on September 9, plan to support several strategic sectors structuring European competitiveness and sovereignty: energy, transport, artificial intelligence, data, supercomputers, semiconductors, space activities, genomics. However, these sectors, where Europe is lagging behind Chinese and American competition, could give rise to future merger operations intended to reach a critical size to make significant investments.
Carrying out such a reform is delicate in both principles and means.
The Commission intends, on the one hand, to limit the market power of large American and Chinese platforms through rigorous control of the application of the Digital Markets Act to promote interoperability, access to data and unlock ecosystems with strong effects. network.
On the other hand, it wants to allow European companies to increase their power on extra-European markets… without however affecting prices or quality on the European market.
A division of experts
The President of the Commission does not say how she intends to go about implementing this new approach. It is unlikely that a real industrial policy criterion will be introduced into the assessment of mergers. In addition to the need to modify the European treaties, this would risk leading to a political approach without a sufficiently precise assessment of the effects, in particular by overestimating the efficiency gains of mega-mergers: you do not always make a champion by putting two honest competitors on the field. shoulders from each other…
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