EU antitrust turn: opening up to larger companies and European champions

BRUSSELS - As announced in recent weeks, the European Commission intends to revise the guidelines by which it assesses mergers and acquisitions at EU level. The aim is to include among the factors to be taken into consideration elements of geopolitics, with which to favour European champions in the case. With this in mind, the EU executive is asking for comments and suggestions from interested parties until the end of June.

'Europe needs bold and innovative companies that can compete on the world stage,' European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen explained on X on Thursday 30 April. 'We have the talent. Now we have to create the conditions for the next European champions to emerge'. The aim of the new guidelines should be to help companies 'prosper, grow and innovate', added the former German Defence Minister.

For decades, antitrust rules have been applied in Europe with the aim of preventing mergers and acquisitions from harming consumers and thus increasing prices. In a context of increasing international competition and protectionism by many non-EU countries, the European Commission wants to revise the criteria by which it assesses mergers, also incorporating the geopolitical factor, while attempting to increasingly defend European sovereignty.

Behind this new flexibility lies the very controversial decision taken in 2019 to ban the merger between Germany's Siemens and France's Alstom. At the time, the European Commission explained that the alliance between the two companies would create a monopoly in some sectors in Europe, leading to higher prices. Recently, many European companies have called for more flexibility to create companies that can compete with American or Asian groups.

Concretely, the guidelines proposed by the European Commission would, for the first time in the world, allow companies to highlight the benefits of industrial or financial operations in terms of sustainability, resilience, investment and innovation of their operations, to counterbalance the regulators' traditional focus on consumer harm and reduced competition.